‘The Woman in the Line’ Review: Natalia Oreiro Faces the Other Side of the Prison Gate (Netflix)

For many middle- or upper-middle-class people—like the protagonist of The Woman in the Line—a prison is a mysterious, unexplored territory, something unknown, feared, and often denied. That’s exactly what happens to Andrea (Natalia Oreiro), a woman who wakes up one morning unaware that, in just a few hours, her life will change completely. Her children have gone to school, she’s alone (a widow) at home, calmly going about her work and her day. Suddenly, the police burst violently into her house with a search warrant—smashing, shouting, turning everything upside down. What on earth is happening?

Her teenage son Gustavo (Federico Heinrich) has been arrested. The film takes a rather long time to reveal the reason for his arrest, perhaps because it assumes the real focus lies elsewhere: in Andrea’s firm belief that it’s all a mistake. “My boy is innocent,” she insists, over and over. And with that same sense of privilege, she tries to get him out—pressuring her lawyer, rushing to the prison where he’s being held, cutting the line to see him, shouting at everyone. But soon it becomes clear that she’s just another one of the many women there: waiting for hours to see their loved ones, being roughly searched, carrying food, clothes, shoes, a thermos—whatever their family member might need.

The Woman in the Line is a film about awakening. Or perhaps several awakenings. For Andrea, it’s the discovery of a world she used to deny and is now slowly beginning to understand. At first, there’s tension between her and the other women who visit the prison daily—mutual suspicion, uneasy glances. But little by little, that changes. The same happens with other inmates, like Alejo (Alberto Ammann), an experienced thief who helps his son adjust to life behind bars.

The script by Benjamín Ávila and Marcelo Müller takes some liberties with the real-life story that inspired the film—the case of Andrea Casamento, founder of the Civil Association of Relatives of Prisoners (ACIFAD)—to craft a gentle investigative thread that leads the protagonist to question whether her son is actually guilty of what he’s accused of.

At its core, The Woman in the Line holds intriguing elements reminiscent of the Dardenne brothers’ cinema—a humanistic portrait of a harsh environment, light-years away from the sensationalized TV portrayals of prison life (like Netflix’s own El marginal, for instance). The film can be a bit naïve, but Ávila achieves his best moments by showing Oreiro’s gradual empathy toward the other women—women who seem very different from her, but perhaps aren’t so different after all. In her bond with “La 22” (played by Chilean actress Amparo Noguera) and in her evolving relationship with the other “women in the line,” the film finds its most honest, sensitive, and moving moments.

The director of Clandestine Childhood loses some of that strength whenever he strays from this central focus—especially in the romantic subplot between Andrea and Alejo, which starts as a form of mutual support but escalates into something more conventional. The film also dips, less successfully, into crime-thriller territory, turning Andrea into an amateur investigator who negotiates with criminals and takes unlikely risks. Those scenes feel contrived, over-scripted, and unnecessary.

This romantic–police hybrid weakens the film’s emotional momentum and delays its resolution. But whenever The Woman in the Line returns to its core—the collision of social classes and the emotional connection between Andrea and the prison world she once ignored—it regains its strength, purpose, and resonance. It reminds us that “the other side” is often much closer than we think.