‘The Marked Woman’ Review: A Solid But Conventional Spanish Crime Thriller (Netflix)

The Marked Woman is a Netflix production from Argentine outfit K&S Films, based on a 2023 crime novel co-written — almost as a stylistic exercise, each author apparently taking turns chapter by chapter — by Spanish writer Rosa Montero and French author Olivier Truc. Beyond that literary pedigree, and setting aside nearly all of the novel’s French storyline, the film directed by Gabe Ibáñez (Hierro) holds together as a fairly classical investigative thriller that kicks into motion when authorities discover a woman locked inside a shipping container in the port of Barcelona — bound, beaten, and, as they’ll soon learn, suffering from total amnesia.

Who is she, and how did she get there? That, essentially, is the mystery The Marked Woman sets out to solve. The woman — who will eventually acquire a name that may or may not be her real one, and who is played by Ana Rujas (La Mesías) — has no memory of how she ended up in that container, leaving local law enforcement to pull at threads. After several years away from film, Candela Peña returns in the role of detective Anna Ripoll, a woman carrying a traumatic past and a complicated personal life, assigned to lead the investigation alongside an agent from Algeciras, the port city from which the container originated.

Written by Lara Sendim — in a screenplay that takes considerable liberties with the source material — the film gradually moves into territory involving police corruption and some murky criminal enterprise connected to a human trafficking network. The stakes escalate quickly: while the woman is still hospitalized, someone comes to kill her. What surprises everyone, herself included, is her remarkable ability to handle that kind of threat — something she claims to have no explanation for. As figures with ambiguous allegiances enter the picture (played by Manolo Solo, Pol López, and others) and the woman’s memory begins to surface in fragments, the story takes shape. The question is whether she’ll survive long enough to complete it.

The Marked Woman (La desconocida is the Spanish title) doesn’t stray far from the established template of the contemporary platform thriller adapted from a bestselling novel: unexpected plot twists, two or three action sequences distributed across the runtime, and a handful of dramatic set pieces designed to showcase its leads. In this case it’s Peña who benefits most, her role expanded in both narrative importance and personal drama well beyond the more functional investigator of Montero’s novel.

There’s neither more nor less than that on offer here. A reasonably solid command of tension in the action sequences and strong use of Barcelona’s natural locations add some value to a plot that rarely breaks free from the conventions of the genre in its trauma-and-family-secrets mode. The most distinctive element may be the door the film leaves deliberately ajar for a sequel — assuming the numbers, as tends to happen in these cases, work out.