Many other reviewers have commented on the plot implausibilities, underwhelming character development, and general aimlessness of the film, so I'll focus on an area with which many might be unfamiliar: the film's setting in time and place, namely pandemic-era Nicaragua.
A director as thoughtful and experienced as Claire Denis surely must have chosen her setting intentionally, as did the novel on which the film is based. Nicaragua is a provocative choice, primarily due to its international standing and role during the decade of the 1980s. Now, it makes fewer headlines, but it remains one of the many countries sanctioned by the US, and it still stimulates political debate over the revolutionary credentials of its current leadership (once again the FSLN, albeit significantly different from its 1980s incarnation). That being the case, one would think that Denis would take care to get time and place details right, since they would matter, especially in a film ostensibly about political intrigue.
Sadly, though, there are multiple areas where the film falls short in that respect. Denis seems to have taken problems from the 1980s, distorted them, and transported them wholesale to the present day, while adding a dash of stereotypical tropical dictatorship imagery in a way that didn't apply in the 80s and doesn't reflect Nicaraguan reality now.
The film makes repeated references to scarcity - of food, drinks, electrical power, WiFi, and even toilet paper. Scarcity of those items (including toilet paper, and especially WiFi, mainly because the internet didn't even exist) indeed was a reality of life in the 80s, but it is definitely not the case now. Nicaragua now has the most extensive electrical grid coverage of any country in Central America, and cuts are very rare. There's free Wifi available at most public parks in every major city. Supermarkets are exceedingly well stocked. Amazon delivers to Nicaragua.
There are multiple references to the preference for US dollars over the local currency, the Córdoba. Again, that was true in the 80s, when there was a thriving black market for dollars and "coyotes" who would openly buy and sell the two currencies could be found in the center of every major city. Now, however, every Nicaraguan can open up an account in dollars at every major bank. Coyotes are nowhere to be found, and a black market for dollars simply doesn't exist. There's absolutely no reason for the main character to spend any time at all agonizing over dollars versus Córdobas.
The film shows a heavy and menacing army presence throughout, even (and absurdly, given the history between the two countries) driving US military issue Humvees, which have never existed in Nicaragua. The Sandinista army was indeed omnipresent in the 80s, but the feel was completely different. It was omnipresent because Nicaragua at the time was essentially a people in arms. Almost every household either had, or could easily have obtained an AK-47 (which, incidentally, indicates that there was no "civil war", because if there were, the government would not have distributed arms so extensively). The soldiers were just regular kids. They weren't fearsome or menacing in any way. Ordinary citizens of every stripe would give them rides in the backs of their pickup trucks without a second thought. Nowadays, there's no more war, and no more draft, so the army is small. Nicaragua's military budget is less than 1% of its GDP. By contrast, El Salvador's military budget is almost twice that percentage. Honduras spends almost 3x that percentage. Army presence in everyday life in modern Nicaragua is minimal, and it's still not at all as portrayed in the film.
The main character yells out threats of US military intervention or invasion in several instances. This is also quite odd, whether we're talking about the 80s or now. In the 80s, the threat of direct US intervention was a real one. The CIA was caught red handed overflying Nicaraguan territory (imagine if we had caught Nicaraguan state security forces overflying the US) in order to provide the Contra with intelligence on how best to avoid Sandinista troop concentrations so that they could better focus on "soft targets" like schools, hospitals, farms, and other civilian infrastructure providing the expansion of social services that made the revolution so popular. Part of the motive behind arming the citizenry was to ensure that the US would face an extensive guerrilla war were they to invade. Nicaragua brought a case before the World Court to try to put an end to US military interference in its affairs, and it ended up winning. Nicaragua then tried to force the US to comply with the ruling by bringing the case to the UN, but the US vetoed a Security Council resolution demanding that all countries obey International Law, and it then voted twice, with votes on the order of 152-3, and 150-2, in the General Assembly, on the same issue - whether or not to obey international law. So, if a US citizen in Nicaragua in the 80s went around yelling about US tanks invading the country, it would have been a much more serious matter than the film depicted. Virtually the entire Nicaraguan citizenry knew about the threat, and somebody would definitely have reacted on hearing it vocalized. Now, however, there's zero threat of a direct US invasion. It's totally implausible, not least because nobody in the US itself would be in favor of it. It makes no sense for her to use that threat, either then or now, even for purely emotional reasons.
Finally, much of the film's staging and ambiance just gets Nicaragua wrong, and this creates a distorted political image of the country. Streets throughout are shown as deserted and quiet in the middle of the day, presumably to imply that everyone's inside out of fear. Real Nicaragua, whether in the 80s or now, was and is the opposite, both in urban centers as well as in the barrios. Multiple references to oil interests in Nicaragua were made. This one's a head-scratcher. Nicaragua, while condemned by the international economic order to be a supplier of raw materials, has never been an oil producer. In fact, 75% of Nicaraguan electricity is generated by renewables - not quite as good as Costa Rica's 99%, but well above either the US or Great Britain, at 20% and 35% respectively. It's implausible for 2 major characters to purportedly be there for oil interests. Nicaragua has been the victim of imperialism, but for reasons other than oil. Another major character is supposedly a "subteniente" in the army. That rank existed in the US-run National Guard, which was overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979. It hasn't existed since. The main character makes reference to "gallo pinto" being non-existent in Nicaragua, which is just false. Towards the end of the film, the soundtrack is "El Condor Paso", which, while it is perhaps the best known Latin American melody, is Andean, not Central American. Nicaragua, unlike most of its neighbors, actually can lay claim to a branch of thoroughly unique folk music, by the Mejia Godoy brothers. It's both popular and populist. During the 1980s, many of their songs became the soundtrack of the revolution, and the political implications of that have played out in fascinating ways since they split from the FSLN in the 90s. Had Denis played one of their songs instead of a generic pan-latin stand-in, she would have lent an air of authenticity while at the same time, depending on which one she chose, tied together some political thematics as well.
In sum, Denis could have done so much more with a minimal amount of research. Europe is full of people who were there in the 80s and beyond, who could have told her all of what I've laid out above. She made the provocative choice to base a story with political undertones in Nicaragua, but then stripped away all of its particularities in favor of stereotypes of Latin American disfunctionality.
A director as thoughtful and experienced as Claire Denis surely must have chosen her setting intentionally, as did the novel on which the film is based. Nicaragua is a provocative choice, primarily due to its international standing and role during the decade of the 1980s. Now, it makes fewer headlines, but it remains one of the many countries sanctioned by the US, and it still stimulates political debate over the revolutionary credentials of its current leadership (once again the FSLN, albeit significantly different from its 1980s incarnation). That being the case, one would think that Denis would take care to get time and place details right, since they would matter, especially in a film ostensibly about political intrigue.
Sadly, though, there are multiple areas where the film falls short in that respect. Denis seems to have taken problems from the 1980s, distorted them, and transported them wholesale to the present day, while adding a dash of stereotypical tropical dictatorship imagery in a way that didn't apply in the 80s and doesn't reflect Nicaraguan reality now.
The film makes repeated references to scarcity - of food, drinks, electrical power, WiFi, and even toilet paper. Scarcity of those items (including toilet paper, and especially WiFi, mainly because the internet didn't even exist) indeed was a reality of life in the 80s, but it is definitely not the case now. Nicaragua now has the most extensive electrical grid coverage of any country in Central America, and cuts are very rare. There's free Wifi available at most public parks in every major city. Supermarkets are exceedingly well stocked. Amazon delivers to Nicaragua.
There are multiple references to the preference for US dollars over the local currency, the Córdoba. Again, that was true in the 80s, when there was a thriving black market for dollars and "coyotes" who would openly buy and sell the two currencies could be found in the center of every major city. Now, however, every Nicaraguan can open up an account in dollars at every major bank. Coyotes are nowhere to be found, and a black market for dollars simply doesn't exist. There's absolutely no reason for the main character to spend any time at all agonizing over dollars versus Córdobas.
The film shows a heavy and menacing army presence throughout, even (and absurdly, given the history between the two countries) driving US military issue Humvees, which have never existed in Nicaragua. The Sandinista army was indeed omnipresent in the 80s, but the feel was completely different. It was omnipresent because Nicaragua at the time was essentially a people in arms. Almost every household either had, or could easily have obtained an AK-47 (which, incidentally, indicates that there was no "civil war", because if there were, the government would not have distributed arms so extensively). The soldiers were just regular kids. They weren't fearsome or menacing in any way. Ordinary citizens of every stripe would give them rides in the backs of their pickup trucks without a second thought. Nowadays, there's no more war, and no more draft, so the army is small. Nicaragua's military budget is less than 1% of its GDP. By contrast, El Salvador's military budget is almost twice that percentage. Honduras spends almost 3x that percentage. Army presence in everyday life in modern Nicaragua is minimal, and it's still not at all as portrayed in the film.
The main character yells out threats of US military intervention or invasion in several instances. This is also quite odd, whether we're talking about the 80s or now. In the 80s, the threat of direct US intervention was a real one. The CIA was caught red handed overflying Nicaraguan territory (imagine if we had caught Nicaraguan state security forces overflying the US) in order to provide the Contra with intelligence on how best to avoid Sandinista troop concentrations so that they could better focus on "soft targets" like schools, hospitals, farms, and other civilian infrastructure providing the expansion of social services that made the revolution so popular. Part of the motive behind arming the citizenry was to ensure that the US would face an extensive guerrilla war were they to invade. Nicaragua brought a case before the World Court to try to put an end to US military interference in its affairs, and it ended up winning. Nicaragua then tried to force the US to comply with the ruling by bringing the case to the UN, but the US vetoed a Security Council resolution demanding that all countries obey International Law, and it then voted twice, with votes on the order of 152-3, and 150-2, in the General Assembly, on the same issue - whether or not to obey international law. So, if a US citizen in Nicaragua in the 80s went around yelling about US tanks invading the country, it would have been a much more serious matter than the film depicted. Virtually the entire Nicaraguan citizenry knew about the threat, and somebody would definitely have reacted on hearing it vocalized. Now, however, there's zero threat of a direct US invasion. It's totally implausible, not least because nobody in the US itself would be in favor of it. It makes no sense for her to use that threat, either then or now, even for purely emotional reasons.
Finally, much of the film's staging and ambiance just gets Nicaragua wrong, and this creates a distorted political image of the country. Streets throughout are shown as deserted and quiet in the middle of the day, presumably to imply that everyone's inside out of fear. Real Nicaragua, whether in the 80s or now, was and is the opposite, both in urban centers as well as in the barrios. Multiple references to oil interests in Nicaragua were made. This one's a head-scratcher. Nicaragua, while condemned by the international economic order to be a supplier of raw materials, has never been an oil producer. In fact, 75% of Nicaraguan electricity is generated by renewables - not quite as good as Costa Rica's 99%, but well above either the US or Great Britain, at 20% and 35% respectively. It's implausible for 2 major characters to purportedly be there for oil interests. Nicaragua has been the victim of imperialism, but for reasons other than oil. Another major character is supposedly a "subteniente" in the army. That rank existed in the US-run National Guard, which was overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979. It hasn't existed since. The main character makes reference to "gallo pinto" being non-existent in Nicaragua, which is just false. Towards the end of the film, the soundtrack is "El Condor Paso", which, while it is perhaps the best known Latin American melody, is Andean, not Central American. Nicaragua, unlike most of its neighbors, actually can lay claim to a branch of thoroughly unique folk music, by the Mejia Godoy brothers. It's both popular and populist. During the 1980s, many of their songs became the soundtrack of the revolution, and the political implications of that have played out in fascinating ways since they split from the FSLN in the 90s. Had Denis played one of their songs instead of a generic pan-latin stand-in, she would have lent an air of authenticity while at the same time, depending on which one she chose, tied together some political thematics as well.
In sum, Denis could have done so much more with a minimal amount of research. Europe is full of people who were there in the 80s and beyond, who could have told her all of what I've laid out above. She made the provocative choice to base a story with political undertones in Nicaragua, but then stripped away all of its particularities in favor of stereotypes of Latin American disfunctionality.