The Official Story

Do you think Alicia is able to reconcile her personal thoughts about her suspicions that her daughter is the child of a murdered political prisoner at one point in her life? Explain your reason and discuss in detail your inferred and factual (based on the film) ideas.

               I don’t think Alicia is able to reconcile her thoughts about her daughter’s potential past. As soon as she is visited by her long lost friends, and she relives her experience while being held captive by telling Alicia about the pregnant women that were taken away and returned childless. After Alicia hears these stories it seems to be the only thing that she can think about and she tries desperately throughout the movie to find answers. Unfortunately for Alicia she also realizes that there is a possibility that if her adopted daughter did come from one of these woman that there was a point in which her newborn daughter was in this political prison for a point of time, and I think she has just as hard of a time dealing with that. In the scene of Gaby’s birthday party, I felt that one of the saddest scenes between Alicia and Roberto when they discuss that they don’t even celebrate Gaby’s actual birthday, rather they celebrate the day that Roberto brought Gaby home. I felt this was a hard scene to watch because it shows how little they know about their daughter and how Alicia is helpless to find the answers to these questions, and how Roberto doesn’t want to be involved in Alicia’s hunt to figure out Gaby’s past. I think this struggle between Alicia and Roberto is another reason that Alicia is unable to let go of the idea that Gaby’s mother could have been murdered in a political prison. Alicia knows so little about how Gaby came to them, and Roberto has the information but refuses to tell her everything, and it is so apparent that he doesn’t want to discuss it. Even in the very beginning of the film when the two are at dinner with friends and Roberto’s friends poke fun of how they received Gaby by asking if they were present at the birth, Roberto not only doesn’t stick up for Alicia, but he doesn’t say anything about it on the way home either. It is apparent throughout the film that Alicia longs to have this information and piece the story of her daughter’s life back together and Roberto has no interest in figuring out the story, rather he wants to forget it and move on, but Alicia can’t deal with this.

Jamie Thomas