dir. Lucía Forner Segarra

The rape-revenge genre is a bit of a mixed bag. It can be a little hard to appreciate the revenge part when you’re forced to sit through the assault in many films of this category. Those weary of the genre from fear of being retraumatized will love the no assault, all revenge “Berta” by Lucía Forner Segarra.

We meet our titular character, played by Nerea Barros, as she tightens a car down on a truck bed for repossession. The man who owns the car tries to argue, but Berta has already put the order in and there’s nothing that can be done about it now. She offers to take him with her to contest the ticket, and he obliges. As they sit in the car she stares at him intensely, giving him an out to finally recognize her. He fails, and his penance is a needle in the neck before getting choked out with his seatbelt.

When the man awakens, he is tied to a bed in a green-tinted room covered in torture tools, reminiscent of Saw. Finally, we learn the man’s name and why he was kidnapped. Alex, played by Elías González, raped Berta when she was a minor and she has been living with the horror of what happened to her for years. She tells him that everything will be ok if he apologizes. Alex vehemently denies that he did any such thing, but he says that if she wants an apology, he’ll say sorry. But an apology without thought and feeling behind it doesn’t satisfy Berta, and she slices into his chest as punishment. Alex finally breaks. He does remember her. He remembers exactly what he did. He admits that he did not stop when Berta begged him to. She even reminds him that the only reason he stopped was because he worried his mom would hear. Alex finally apologizes, but the apology is hollow. When Alex’s son is brought up, he begs Berta not to hurt him. She says she wouldn’t hurt him because he’s done nothing wrong, but Alex has. After giving him another shot at the apology, she sets up a surgery curtain and begins to remove the root of the problem.

The look of the film takes a shift here. When Berta is first seen taking Alex’s car, it’s bright and sunny. You can feel the warmth of the scene. Then we are dumped in a sickly, dirty, and cold-looking environment where the camera and dialogue are both tight and tense. By steep contrast, the sudden spray of blood as Berta hacks away at Alex is almost comical. It truly is a geyser of blood, soaking Alex’s head and chest completely as he wails. It almost feels slapsticky with how long the intense spray goes on. But it is for good reason, as we discover that Berta didn’t even follow through with the implied mutilation of Alex. When she removes the surgery barrier we see that Berta has positioned a pump full of fake blood to hose her assaulter down. She says that there isn’t a reason to cut his penis off because even if men didn’t have penises they would just use objects to hurt women. What she really wants is for him to raise his son correctly and to act right from now on. He makes her this promise before he is knocked out again.

The short ends with Berta talking to her therapist on a Zoom call. She’s moved away from the city that haunts her, and she looks happier in a sunny room. Her therapist asks if she feels better after writing down what she would say to Alex if she saw him again, and Berta concedes that she does because she thinks he understands what he did now. We end on Alex waking up abandoned with his car in the middle of nowhere, and we finally get our title card: Berta’s name carved into his chest.

Lucía Forner Segarra’s “Berta” is a phenomenal look at what truly goes on inside the mind of a sexual assault survivor. So many people live with this all-consuming rage that they must learn to work through, or it will become who they are. Berta is able to get the justice she wants without even doing the graphic harm she has dreamed of all of this time. By the end, we see someone who is able to move on and become a new version of herself. Rather than a reminder of brutality, this film is a representation of comfort to the hurt; especially with Alex being the only man seen in the entire film. Women are safe here, and Berta will make sure of it.