Blu-Ray Review | Ema | 2021
Like the burning sun that provides the backdrop for its marketing (not to mention the dance performances at its heart), the title character of Pablo Larrain's Ema is an expanding star, destined to swallow up all who come too close in a fiery burst. Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo) is a dancer, her husband Gastón (Gael García Bernal) is a choreographer; together they adopt a child to seemingly complete their life, only to find him violent and antagonistic (a more literal pyromaniac than Ema's figurative one), and they make the decision to return him to the adoption agency and move on with their lives. Only they cannot move on with their lives - not only haunted by their abandonment of young Polo (Cristián Suárez) but by the nagging questions of what their lives could have been had they kept him. Their decision to renounce their parenthood sends shockwaves through their tight-knight community and turns them into social and professional pariahs. Ema, ultimately, regrets their decision,
