The Snow Girl (La chica de nieve), a Spanish drama

The Snow Girl (La chica de nieve) is a dreary Spanish drama about a kidnapped child. Most of the characters are suffering from a trauma of some kind. This dead serious series teems with depressed characters, an abundance of talk about evil men, grieving parents, sexual assault victims, and frightened women and children. There are some spoilers ahead.

Miren Rojo (Milena Smit) is a reporter. When the story begins in 2010, she still in school and working at the newspaper as an intern. One of her instructors, Eduardo (Jose Coronado), continues to be interested in her career and is a mentor for her throughout.

Five year old Amaya (Emma Sánchez and Iratxe Emparan as an older child) is at a crowded street celebration with her parents Ana (Loreto Mauleón) and Álvaro (Raúl Prieto). She’s standing right beside her father as he buys a balloon. She just vanishes. Her parents run through the crowd screaming her name, but she’s gone.

Miren starts working on the story then, and continues for the next 9 years until the child is finally recovered. By then Miren is a well-known reporter. She’s working through her own trauma as a rape victim through the entire series.

The cops assigned to the case – Inspectora Belén Millán (Aixa Villagrán) and Chaparro (Marco Cáceres) – follow all kinds of leads. They mostly lead to evil, predatory men who are rapists or pedophiles. Some of the men they suspect might have been involved in raping Miren.

Three years after the girl disappears, a videotape of her playing in a bedroom is sent to the reporter, Miren. This clue isn’t enough to help them find her, although it reassures her parents that she’s still alive.

Another videotape arrives after 9 years. It’s finally Miren who solves the case and puts herself in mortal danger in the process. To me, there were a couple of very big holes in the last few minutes of the plot. In the last few seconds of the film we learn what the title means.

The film is about Miren and her hunt for the child. The end is about Miren as well, more than about the child.

The series was slow but held my interest. I didn’t like the greenish filter that cast a gloomy haze over everything. The six part series was based on a novel by Javier Castillo. Laura Alvea directed 2 of the episodes. The series is streaming on Netflix.