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MATAHARIS is the story of three ordinary women with an unusual profession: private detective. They work, buy groceries, have children, husbands and boyfriends, unsatisfying love relationships... Constantly out in the hustle and bustle of Madrid’s traffic and city streets, they know we all have secrets. Inés, Eva and Carmen have worked together for years at their job, which has nothing to do with the cliché private eye, portrayed in countless novels and movies as a tough, solitary hero up against a femme fatale. Inés, in her twenties, is attractive and bright. When she left her hometown—Monforte de Lemos—to go to college in Madrid, she already knew she wanted a different life from the one she’d have if she stayed home or went back after graduating. An independent woman in search of adventure, she studied to be a private detective while at the university. Now, after four years in the field, she knows the profession is not actually as thrilling as she had imagined but she still loves it. Every day is different, each job requires a fresh approach, there is a lot of work and chances to get ahead in the future... For now, her only complaint is her disastrous love life. It’s not easy to keep up friendships or start new relationships when she is always moving around, coming, going, changing her plans or standing people up... Even though she hasn’t said so, and she’s got an off-and-on lover, she’d really like to meet someone special and start a family, like Eva. Eva, in her late thirties, can handle anything. She’s been with Iñaki for five years and they have two children: a four-year-old girl and a six-month-old boy. She has just gone back to work after taking maternity leave and is juggling work and breast-feeding, well aware that, at her age, she can’t “temporarily” stop working, like she did with her first child. She’s tired and under some stress, and although she and Iñaki have a good relationship, she can’t help thinking he doesn’t do his share of childcare or housework. And he thinks she went back to work so soon on a whim. In the end, she has to admit Carmen is right about the women of Eva’s generation. In spite of all their confidence, liberated partners, and professional opportunities, they actually get into even worse messes than the women of Carmen’s generation did. Carmen is fifty-something and she’s been married to Alberto for almost thirty years. He’s a quiet man with a routine life and is hard to argue with. Carmen was a housewife for many years but ten, no, twelve years ago, she decided to go back to work. Her children were grown up and she wanted to get out and do things. She looked for a secretarial post. That’s how she came to the agency. At first, she ran the office, looking after clients and the telephone. Her boss, Valbuena, slowly came to rely on her and made her get her license (back then, you just had to pass a test). She then went to court to give evidence and handled simple cases, doing her new job as well as the secretarial one. Now she coordinates the rest of the agents and plans how cases will be handled. They are immersed in a world where it is easier to follow an employee, your spouse, a future business manager, or an accident victim requiring compensation than it is to trust the person or just ask them what you want to know. They are used to not judging others’ deceptions and lies, which means they can’t help getting caught in their own. Since love appears where you least expect it, Inés finds that someone special in the worst place: at work. He is the subject she’s investigating on a case, a person she has lied to and deceived for months. Inés wonders if she will ever manage to come clean, and if he can love her, once he finds out who she is and what her job is. She discovers a new way of life with him that makes her think about how much her soul is worth and whether being a detective is a price she should pay. Lies and silences also affect Eva when she discovers that Iñaki has a ten-year-old son she didn’t know about. The perfect little world they were building becomes a mirage that is fast disappearing. Is Iñaki who she thinks he is? How could he keep something like that a secret? Why? Eva feels betrayed and doesn’t know if she will be able to forgive and forget. In the same way, Carmen has an affair with a client who makes it impossible for her to forget she’s alive, who puts a name to what is going on between her and Alberto, her husband. How can she ignore that what she feels by his side, day after day, is loneliness, miles of silences and lack of communication? With the city as the life breath and witness to their double lives, these three women look for a way to try to start afresh.
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