Filled with back-breaking realism and charming familial affection, Alcarras' Catalan drama is intimate and clear. annarosemary reviewed the film, out today on Mubi:
there is a visual preoccupation with car interiors. Characters are framed by the smudged windscreen, held within the safe, impersonal metal frame, hurtling between hilly vistas and grey suburbs. For the Solé family who are perpetually caught in the flux of natural cycles, the car is a haven, a way for them to control the way the world moves around them.
The family is often sprawled across their home, fleeing the stress of the neverending harvest. Simón crucially never offers us a clear layout of the family’s land, capturing it in a series of close-ups, disjointed and intimate. Every moment is fractured, conveying how disparate the family has become, desperate to avoid the perpetual stress that lingers over every conversation at this pivotal moment.
Eventually Rogelio is banned from driving the car. Quimet warns him that it could be dangerous at his age and besides, the landlord doesn’t need any more hard-earned gifts from this family. There is a shadow of recognition that passes across Rogelio’s face at this demand, awareness shattering any façade of control as he stands on one side of the vehicle watching his son storm into the house. The car is blocked in with a puzzle of overlapping objects, stuck in the dark of the musty garage.
Initially, it is hard to understand why this family is still here, drawn to this place and to one another. While it would have been more effective to introduce a sense of shared belonging early in the film, Simón bides her time before delivering pockets of respite. In one particularly lovely moment, the family chases one another around the pool, pushing each person in over a lengthy scene.
But the most moving moment of familial clarity comes later, as the family listens to Iris and her cousins Pau and Pere perform a number. Her wilting, unsteady voice is met by Rogelio’s pronounced recitation: “I sing for my land. / Solid ground, beloved land.” Simón lets the final lyrics tumble out while she lingers on a shot of the peach trees rustling in endless rows, quietly echoing the song’s refrain.
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