The orderlies who have shown up at the posh townhouse have a question.

“Is she aware of what’s happening?”

The two daughters waffle and deflect, with one more certain of the decision than the other. She’s the one who figures the phrase “It’s for your own good, Mom,” should be code for a nurse sedating their mother for the trip to a mental hospital should she give them any trouble.

The old woman, her hair still dyed fiery red, smiles and complies even as she wonders where they’re taking her “at this time of night.” She ponders the earrings her oldest is wearing. Weren’t those mine? She gives the 50ish “kid” such a pinch.

When she’s delivered to her destination, she’s just conscious enough to state her intentions from the gurney she’s strapped to.

“I am not spending a single night in here!”

“27 Nights” of her insisting “I don’t belong here” later, she is home and the courts are involved. The mystery? Does Martha Hoffman, 83 year-old art collector, bon vivant, drinker and partier, have control of her faculties? Does she need to be in care? Or is she just “eccentric?”

Director, writer and co-star Daniel Hendler‘s film is a mystery, a journey of personal growth and a quixotic quest to diagnose what constitutes “eccentric” behavior and what relatives and the courts might consider insane.

Hendler plays the “expert” forensic psychotherapist assigned the job of making that determination about Martha (Marilú Marini), a woman whose daughters Myriam (Carla Peterson) and Olga (Paula Grinzspan) and other experts have decreed is drinking, partying and giving away the family fortune to grifting, leeching artsy types.

There’s a missing Dalí among other objects, an impulsive intent to finance some sort of art center being set up by this sketchy artist’s collective, and a tendency to carry on like a randy, hard-drinking 25 year-old.

Martha resented the internment and is brittle under “interrogation,” resisting methodical plodder Casares, who may be an introvert and easily pushed around, but who is determined to grill her with his signature “questionaire” to get a handle on her sanity.

Martha evades. Martha insults. Martha distracts.

And stumbling into those sketchy-sketchier-and-sketchiest artists and their ringerleader, the flamboyant Girves (Humberto Tortonese), hauling stuff out of Martha’s townhouse, Casares can see the daughters’ point.

But pressure from the judge in charge (Roberto Suárez) to rush through this and sign off on it, mysteriously missing brain scans that the certain-of-his-own-brilliance psychotherapist (Ezequiel Díaz) used to justify her hospitalization and a general concern with “heirlooms” and other matters financial have our “expert” investigator in a quandary.

Add to that Martha’s efforts to bring him out of his shell, ply him with drinks and encourage him to be more sociable — helpful assistant Alejandra (Julieta Zylberberg) gets his attention — and Casares doesn’t know what to think.

Hendler as star makes a dogged “hero,” someone not above having his head turned by every fresh bit of “evidence,” every revelation of this or that “agenda.” Casares is a slave to his beeper (the film is an early ’90s period piece) and beholden to his father, whom he lives with and who has more of a social life than his son ever has.

As a director, Hendler parks us on that teeter-totter with Casares, uncertain who is taking advantage of whom.

The artists collective is a druggy, impoverished lot with a lot of radical ideas about economics.

“Money trickled down to the arts is a drizzle of justice” (in Spanish with English subtitles, or dubbed) would seem to excuse all manner of looting.

The daughters? They seem more worried about the dough-re-mi.

Screen veteran Marini doesn’t make Martha a cute “Harvey” eccentric cliche. She hints that the woman is paranoid. Perhaps she’s aged into someone naive enough to be preyed upon, gotten careless about who she associates with and is gullibly giving it all away. But as Martha she makes us wonder if that’s a reason enough to take away her independence?

The structure of the script — with the “investigation” happening in the fictive present (the film is “inspired by a true story”) and what happened during those “27 Nights” and days discovered in flashbacks — ensures that we invest in the mystery as Casares discovers things that should sway him to one conclusion or the other.

And the finale has a flash of warmth that is surprisingly moving.

It’s slow, but uneven narrative or not, the picture works, and probably better with subtitles (if you don’t speak Spanish) than with the colorless and over-simplified dubbed English language soundtrack.

Rating: TV-MA, drugs, alcohol, profanity

Cast: Marilú Marini, Daniel Hendler, Carla Peterson, Paula Grinzspan, Julieta Zylberberg and
Humberto Tortonese

Credits: Directed by Daniel Hendler, scripted by Daniel Hendler, Mariano Llinás and Martín Mauregui, based on a book by Natalia Zito. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:47