The premiere of El tiempo de las moscas (Time Flies) invites a rigorous academic and cultural dissection of the “returnee” figure in contemporary fiction. Inés Experey, the protagonist, is not merely a character; she is a sociological case study. To understand the gravity of her reintegration, one must analyze the concept of “civil death” often associated with long-term incarceration. For fifteen years, Inés was removed from the civic body. Her return is not a restoration of her previous status but an entry into a liminal space. The series captures this through the motif of the “outsider.” Inés attempts to reclaim her bourgeois identity—her mannerisms, her speech patterns, her expectations of deference—but these are now discordant with her reality as an ex-convict and a manual laborer.
The theoretical framework of Julia Kristeva’s “abjection” is essential here. The abject is that which “disturbs identity, system, order.” Inés, as a murderer, was expelled to preserve the social order. Her return threatens that order because she refuses to remain invisible. The fumigation business, “MMM,” is the mechanism by which she forces society to acknowledge her. She enters the private sanctuaries of the home—the bedroom, the kitchen—spaces she is theoretically barred from due to her “tainted” moral status. The series brilliantly uses the hazmat suit as a visual representation of this abjection. It marks her as dangerous (handling poison) and protects her from the gaze of the client. She becomes a non-person, a utility, which paradoxically allows her access to the secrets of the powerful.
Furthermore, the relationship between Inés and her daughter, Lali, is a critical axis of pain. The series explores the estrangement caused by the crime. The daughter’s rejection serves as the ultimate social sanction, more painful than the prison sentence itself. Inés’s isolation is total, save for La Manca. This isolation is what drives the melancholic tone of the series. It is not just sadness; it is social mourning. Inés is mourning the death of her former self, and the series is the funeral procession, moving slowly through the streets of the suburbs.
The Conurbano as a Character: A Psychogeography of Exclusion
The setting of Time Flies deserves a dedicated analysis. The “Conurbano Bonaerense”—the ring of municipalities surrounding the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires—is a space of immense contradictions. In Argentine cinema, the conurbano has often been depicted through the lens of “poverty porn” or sensationalist crime dramas. However, Time Flies, under the direction of Katz and Naishtat, adopts a different approach: a “psychogeography” of the suburbs.
Here, the conurbano is a landscape of survival. The series contrasts the manicured lawns of the gated communities (countries) where Inés and La Manca kill flies, with the chaotic, vibrant, and precarious neighborhoods where they live. This spatial dichotomy maps perfectly onto the class conflict at the show’s heart. The “fly” knows no borders; it breeds in the garbage of the poor and lands on the food of the rich. By chasing the fly, Inés crosses these heavily policed borders. The van becomes a shuttle between worlds.
The directors of photography, Yarará Rodríguez and Manuel Rebella, utilize the natural light and architectural textures of the conurbano to create a specific mood. The grey skies, the humidity, the peeling paint—these are not just background elements; they are externalizations of the characters’ internal weariness. The “melancholy” noted by early viewers is rooted in this landscape. It is a landscape of unfinished projects—half-built houses, paved roads that turn to dirt—mirroring the unfinished business of Inés’s life.
The Feminist Context: From Tuya to the Green Wave
The transition from the novel Tuya (2005) to El tiempo de las moscas (2022) traces the arc of the Argentine feminist movement. In 2005, the discourse around femicide was nascent; crimes like Inés’s were often categorized as “crimes of passion.” By today, the context has shifted entirely. The “Ni Una Menos” (Not One Less) movement, which exploded in 2015, politicized domestic violence and gendered killing.
Inés is a problematic figure in this landscape. She killed a woman. In the series, she must confront the fact that her actions, which she justified as defending her family, are now viewed through a lens of internalized misogyny. The “Marea Verde” (Green Wave) that legalized abortion in 2020 is referenced in the series through background details—graffiti, news broadcasts, the attitudes of younger characters. Inés’s confusion or resistance to these changes provides a rich source of dramatic tension. She is a conservative woman in a progressive world.
Her partnership with La Manca is an accidental feminism. They do not use the rhetoric of empowerment, but their actions—founding a woman-owned business in a male-dominated field, protecting each other from violence, sharing resources—are praxis. The series posits that survival for women in a patriarchal capitalist system is inherently a feminist act, regardless of the characters’ ideological awareness. The “MMM” acronym (Women, Death, Flies) places “Women” centrally between the inevitability of death and the persistence of the pest.
The Directors: Auteur Theory in the Age of Algorithms
The selection of Ana Katz and Benjamín Naishtat is a curatorial coup for Netflix. Ana Katz is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Argentine cinema. Her films (Sueño Florianópolis, Una novia errante) often deal with women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, navigating family vacations or romantic failures with a mixture of tragedy and comedy. She excels at the “cinema of discomfort.” In Time Flies, this translates to the excruciating social interactions Inés endures. Katz’s camera holds the shot a second too long, forcing the viewer to squirm alongside the protagonist.
Benjamín Naishtat brings a different energy. His films (Rojo, Historia del Miedo) are thrillers that dissect the complicity of the middle class in state violence. His influence is felt in the conspiracy plot involving Mrs. Bonar. Naishtat understands fear—not the jump-scare fear of horror, but the creeping dread of knowing that the system is rigged against you. The combination of Katz’s intimate psychological portraiture and Naishtat’s structural critique creates a unique “tone” that defines the series. It is neither a straight drama nor a dark comedy; it is a “melancholic noir.”
The Literary Adaptation: Translating the Voice
Claudia Piñeiro’s novels are driven by voice. In Tuya, Inés narrates in a frantic, obsessive first-person stream of consciousness. Translating this to the screen is the primary challenge for screenwriters Larralde, Diodovich, and Custo. The series uses the dialogue between Inés and La Manca to externalize this voice. In prison, one learns to talk to avoid silence; out of prison, they talk to make sense of the world.
The adaptation also expands the world. The novel focuses tightly on Inés; the series, with its six episodes, fleshes out the secondary characters, giving the “chorus” a larger role. This expansion allows for a broader social critique. We see not just Inés’s struggle, but the struggles of the other inmates, the clients, the police officers. The series becomes a tapestry of the “flyover” country that is the conurbano.
The “MMM” vs “FFF” translation issue highlights the cultural specificity of the work. In Spanish, “Moscas” (Flies) and “Mujeres” (Women) share the alliterative “M”, linking them linguistically. The series plays with this link. Women are treated like flies: shooed away, swatted, ignored, but omnipresent. The “Death” (Muerte) is the third leg of the stool. Inés deals in death—the death of insects, the death of her rival, the death of her past life.
Technical Analysis: The Aesthetics of Decay
The visual and auditory language of the series is meticulously crafted. The art direction by Ezequiel Galeano emphasizes the texture of “decay.” The fumigation equipment—hoses, tanks, masks—is fetishized, presented as the tools of the trade. The contrast between the sterile hazmat suits and the dirty environments creates a visual irony. Inés tries to keep clean in a dirty world.
The sound design is paramount. “Time Flies” implies movement, speed, buzzing. The soundscape utilizes the drone of the fly as a musical element, blending it with the score by Basso and Sujatovich. The “silence” mentioned by reviewers in similar genre pieces suggests that the series knows when to be quiet. The tension is built not through explosions but through the absence of sound, the holding of breath.
The editing by Andrés Quaranta and María Astrauskas controls the “time” of the series. Prison time is cyclical and slow; free time is linear and fast. The series plays with this temporal dissonance. For Inés, the fifteen years in prison were a void; now, time rushes at her. The editing rhythm reflects this disorientation, moving between long, static takes of waiting and sudden bursts of frenetic activity.
The Netflix Strategy: “Made in Argentina”
Time Flies is a pillar of Netflix’s “Made in Argentina” strategy. The platform has realized that to retain subscribers in Latin America, it must produce high-quality local content. This series is not a “telenovela”; it is “premium cable” content. It targets a sophisticated audience that reads Piñeiro, watches film festival entries, and appreciates auteur directors.
The production by Haddock Films (Vanessa Ragone) guarantees a certain cinematic standard. Ragone is an Oscar winner (The Secret in Their Eyes), and her involvement signals that this is a prestige project. The scale of the production—hundreds of extras, multiple locations—shows that Netflix is willing to spend money to capture the Argentine market.
Moreover, the series acts as a cultural export. It presents a specific slice of Argentine life to the world. It is not the tango-and-steak Argentina of tourism brochures; it is the gritty, complex, intellectual Argentina of the middle class. By exporting this narrative, Netflix shapes the global perception of the country.
The Entomology of the Soul
In the final analysis, Time Flies is an entomology of the human soul under pressure. It studies how we survive when we are crushed, how we persist like the fly. Inés Experey is a monster and a hero, a murderer and a survivor. The series asks us to withhold judgment and simply observe her flight. It is a sombre, beautiful, and necessary addition to the canon of Argentine noir. It reminds us that the past is a sticky trap, and we are all just trying to buzz our way free.
Premiered today.
