समाचार

A filmmaker with an affinity for the dark, Daniel Espinosa caught international attention with 2010 Swedish thriller “Easy Money.” Hollywood was immediately and understandably intrigued by his capacity to make us care about shady criminal types, and for his part, the Chilean-born, Sweden-based director couldn’t resist the lure of making an American studio movie. Or three. Alas, each paycheck took Espinosa farther from his core strength: finding the humanity in morally compromised characters. Now, in a hard swing from ill-advised snabba cash project “Morbius” in 2022, “Madame Luna” can be seen either as penance or simply a return to form. Either way, this tense, tragic contemporary immigrant drama makes infinitely better use of his instincts.

Where Espinosa’s past four credits allowed him to work with an enviable roster of English-speaking stars — Denzel Washington, Tom Hardy, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jared Leto — this smaller, more sociological character study gives him a chance...