There are many reviews out there stating that this film very importantly takes on the scourge of sex-trafficking in Latin America. The director of this film, Michel Franco, wraps the beginning and end of this project with statements about how this film was based on "actual events" and how there are thousands of teens and young adults victimized by these crimes every year; this film was given positive recognition at Cannes in 2009, and respectful reviews by such publications as Variety, Indiewire, and the Huffington Post.

I cannot imagine-- in the current social-political situation of 2019 as compared with ten years ago --that "Daniel & Ana" would be received in the same way today.

Though the director might protest, this film was, in my view, little more than a dressed-up exploitation film. For anyone who has seen this, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

The scene in question, lasting about five minutes involving Dario Yazbek Bernal as Daniel and an extremely fit and supple Marimar Vega as Ana, could have been done to equally-shocking but less-explicit effect by simply having the camera capture the shoulders on up, or do an obscured view, or a combination of both, etc., as many television movies do. Instead the director goes a much more explicit route, complete with crystal-clear photography and very extended, slow-moving camera gazes.

I've no issue with the content of this film-- and the production value throughout is excellent --I just find it amusing that so many people (just look at the Amazon reviews, in addition to what I've written in the first paragraph above) were taken in by a film which is ostensibly "deep" but is in fact, nothing more than a sensationalistic exercise in prurience, in the same vein as "Last House on the Left" (1972), "I Spit on Your Grave" (1978), "Irreversible" (2002) and many other films which claimed to be much more than they actually were (and which, nowadays, would be almost impossible to make, much less release).