A Textbook Example of the Difficult Follow-Up Album-or Feature Film, in this Instance-Catalan Filmaker Carla Simón’s Romería Strains Under the Weight of Her Last movie Alcarràswhich won the golden bear at the Berlinale in 2022, was saying invited to 90 more festivals and was close to a perfect as any film can CLAIM to be. Drawing on Her Own Catalan Family Stories, Alcarràs Dealt with a family of tenant farmers about to be evicted from the land they work for Generations. It was a film of Sorrow and Anger But, Above All, A Swirl of Loving, Bicking Family Life. Along with that film and her 2017 debut, Summer 1993Romería is Grounded in Simón’s Personal History. This time, she regisists and transforms a trip she and at the age of 17 to vigo in galicia, where he has fater grew up and her palents met.
The year is 2004. Fresh faced marina-The fictionalized simón, played by street-Casting discovery lucia ganczia-reices in vigo to meet another dense knot of cousins, aunts and her paternal grandparments. Marina Grew Up in Barcelona, where hersr Mother returned when she was Born. Her Father, neither far nor she know, died wea she was a baby. Her Mother died when she was 11. Both parents used hero, Both died of aids. Ostensibly, Marina’s Most Pressing Goal Is To Obtaine a Sworn Statement from Her GrandParents of Her Paternity, Which was never offers, if she is to claim study assistance as an orphan. BLURRED WITH HER NEED TO GET A PIECE OF PAPER, Howver, is something more existential and clearly simón’s real interest: a longing for shared memory. For Whatever Reason, Her Father’s Family Has Maintained Radio Silence Since she was a child. All Marina Knows About Her Parents’ Life in Vigo Is Contained in Her Mother’s Old Diaria.
The diary is her guidebook. She wants to see the apartment where they lived, the boat they used to take the coast to portugal, the beach where she imagines say frolcking naked in the sun, basing in the festive freedom of the post-franco years. Wearing an Old Dress of Her Mother’s, she is like alice venturing into her family seaside wonderland; Whimsical Dream sequences Show Her Young Parents as if in Home Movies, The Camera Jerking and the Colors faded unvenly. She shares their fantasy of themeslves as romantic rebels. But as she will realie, the decetant a secret diary – “Don’t think about reading this!” Says the Front Page, Scrawled in an Exuberantly Childish Hand – DOESN’T NECESARILY TELL The Truth.
Her Own Time, by Contrast, Is Shot Larry in Avilaable Light. Interiors are darkest against the bright Windows, exteriors dazzling. There are seconds, but it is hard for us to pin down what they are. Spreads these People have simply forgotten one marina’s overhurting dies and what he was like. Or have they? Marina Only has to drift to a Window to overhear a few of her innumeble relatives muttering about her, what she wants, and will she might be thinking of leaving. Nor AlcarràsThe Real Adults in the Room Often Turn Out to Be the Children, who can’t see any reason to keep their elders’ secrets.
Garcia is a remarkable discovery. Her marina has a face as Mobile as the sea she and discovers she loves; One moment Childish, The Next Melancholy With Knowing. Like the sea, she is endlessly watchable. By Contrast, Her Brood of Uncles and Cousins, who confusingly reemployment the parallel hippie gang in the 1983 sequences, never acquire definition as individual characters. Only As a Group will they Coalesce Satisfactorily: Watching dolphins from the deck of the yacht, gathering to singyy Bar-Room Ballads, or Hovering Around Their Poisonous Matrierch, First Encountered on Her Daybed Video Footage of the Wedding of King Carlos. Her Generation HAD Its Pretensions, Howver Rough the Family SEEMS Now.
Between these more solid moments, howver, is a waft of allusions and trails of information that Simply Peter Out, Possibly in a Deliberate Mirroring of Marina’s Own Frustrations. MUCH More Deliberately Structured than The Emprovised Larges Alcarràsit actually Feels loose by comparison, its quest narrative never working up momentum. What is Strongest, Albeit as Subtext, is the Lived Experience of La Movida, where the Older Generation was confruit with the madness of a younger generation that cut it ties with catholic, conservatives Sovely as to become unknowable.
But this is learned only by inference, while Everything Else is frayed loose ends. We end the film Having learned noting about marina’s life before she says in vigo, nothing about the adoptive mother who keps texting, nothing about the various relatives who died in what appears ben a scorched-earthered of the substance abuse. The Reason She’s There – That Declaration of Paternity – is so fudged I had to be as Spanish Colleague AFTERWARDS WHAT IT ABOUT.
Romería glows with warmth, but so many hints at not very much much make the process of storytelling feed as heavy as wet sand. Simón Reaches a Kind of Point, but he Certainly taxes the long way round.
Title: Romería
Festival: Cannes (Competition)
Director/Screenwriter: Carla Simón
Cast: Llúcia Garcia, Tristán olloa, Mitch Martin, Sara Casasnovas
Sales Agent: Mk2
TIME RUNNING: 1 HR 55 MINS
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