Contrition Village, an isolated town in Florida, is a haven for sex offenders who have served their sentence.
State laws requiring them to reside more than 300 meters from a school, park or playground make it nearly impossible for them to reintegrate.
Filed for life on the internet, these undesirables find a social life in Contrition Village, live on odd jobs and go to mass every Saturday.
The community is governed by a reverend, himself a sex offender who has served his sentence.
This between-self is disturbed by the suspicious death of a resident, burned alive in his sleep.
Marcia Harris, a local reporter who lives near the community, is leading the investigation.
Many questions underlie the Contrition Village album.
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Contrition village
is not entirely fiction.
This place offering a haven of peace to former sex offenders exists under the name of Miracle Village.
The Spaniards Keko and Carlos Portela were inspired by it to develop an extremely dark thriller while inviting the reader to reflect.
Is the evil in us?
And what are the springs?
What motivates a pedophile?
Is he able to sincerely make an act of contrition?
Is reintegration possible?
And above all, does he have the right to do so?
Can we grant forgiveness to a pedophile?... All these questions underlie this dark thriller.
Suspense intertwines with reflection, in a skilfully orchestrated staging by Carlos Portela, considered one of the greatest screenwriters in his country, deploying his talent in cinema, television as well as in graphic narration.
Father driven by revenge, journalist eager to tell a good story, ambivalent police officers, torn between their duty and the disgust that sex offenders inspire in them, overworked judicial controller, immersive photographer interested in the subject... Carlos Portela composed the whole a gallery of characters who struggle with these philosophical, ethical and even religious questions when they interact with sexual predators.
In Contrition Village, the undesirables make friends, live off odd jobs and go to mass every Saturday.
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Each story treated in parallel confronts the reader, at the same time as its protagonists, with evil incarnate.
Skepticism, confusion, repulsion, anger, cross the reading of such a book that is both edifying and disturbing.
Relayed by the black and intense line of Keko, the album contains an oppressive dimension which brilliantly serves this thriller with sustained suspense, conducted without voyeurism or obscenity.
And from which the reader comes out troubled and inclined to meditation.
