The Marked Woman (La desconocida) begins with a dramatic scene. A dock worker is led to a shipping container by his dog. Inside he finds a nearly dead woman who is tied and gagged.

The Marked Woman moves to the hospital where we learn that the woman (Ana Rujas) doesn’t remember anything, even her name. Before she’s out of the hospital, someone comes in and tries to kill her. That quickly ups the questions her presence raises.

Two different police officers arrive to work on the mysterious case. The first is Anna Ripoll (Candela Peña). She looks depressed and argues with her boss to be allowed to return to work after some unspecified leave, apparently related to the reason why she’s so depressed.

The second is from an entirely different jurisdiction. He is Quique Zárate (Pol López). He’s there because he thinks the woman in the shipping container might be the sister of Lucia (Kira Miró). Lucia made a video confessing something that has Zárate under investigation by internal affairs. He wants to find Lucia.

The mystery woman doesn’t know if Lucia is her sister.

These two officers have very different goals and work in very different ways, but they cooperate (reluctantly) to figure out this case.

The clues lead through a dark underworld of sex trafficking, dirty cops, murder, and kidnapping. The case isn’t worked as a procedural police drama. The two police officers go around the law and cut corners. It wasn’t action packed, but it did throw in a few exciting action scenes.

Through flashbacks we learn what Ripoll has been through and who Zárate trusted that turns out to be a dirty cop. The mystery woman recovers all her memory at once to explain why people are after her. Her back story is explained in flashbacks as well.

The film is based on a novel by Olivier Truc and Rosa Montero, which was written in alternating chapters in Spanish and French. Somehow I picture these two writers being like the two very different cops in the story – cooperating somehow to solve a problem.

Netflix is stepping up its production of Spanish language material from Spain. We will see more films like this in the future. The Marked Woman wasn’t outstanding, but it was interesting enough to stick with for the answers.

If you take a look at it, please share your thoughts in the comments.