Opus Zero review – Willem Dafoe's no Columbo in auteurist mystery
Summary
There is a halo effect created by Willem Dafoe’s weathered features: those cliff-edge cheekbones perched above carved-out hollows instantly confer fierceness and depth of soul to whatever role he is playing. Dafoe’s face certainly adds watchability to this slow-going and precious arthouse drama, in which he plays an American visiting a dusty Mexican town to sift through his late father’s belongings. Clearing out his dad’s flat, Paul finds a photograph of a young woman who disappeared from the town decades earlier. He decides to investigate, though clearly he’s no Columbo; chatting to the local priest he is distracted by a theological tussle on the decline of Catholicism in Mexico. Opus Zero’s two strands come together unsatisfactorily at the end when Paul is interviewed on camera about the elusive nature of inspiration, impishly giving the director the philosophical run-around.