THE STORY – With her mother’s diary in hand, Marina’s search for official documents for university leads her to her biological family on the Atlantic coast. What starts as an administrative quest reveals long-buried family secrets.
THE CAST – Llúcia Garcia, Mitch Tristán Ulloa, Miryam Gallego, Sara Casasnovas, Alberto Gracia, Marina Troncoso, José Ángel Egido, Janet Novás & Celine Tyll
THE TEAM – Carla Simón (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 115 Minutes
In need of signatures on some documents in order to apply for film school, 18-year-old Marina (Llúcia Garcia) must travel to Vigo, on Spain’s southern coast, to meet her paternal relatives for the first time. Orphaned at a young age, she’s learned very little about her birth parents over the years, with only her mother’s diary and some bits and pieces of information from her adoptive parents to go on. She’s hoping that she can also learn more about her birth parents on this trip. Still, despite the wealthy family’s open-heartedness towards her, they seem reluctant to talk about her parents much, politely correcting some of the facts she thought she knew but shutting down any further discussion. By the end of her week-long trip, will Marina get any of the things she came for?
Carla Simón’s “Romerìa” finds the Spanish auteur making yet another wistful, semi-autobiographical memory piece centered around a family surrounded by the beautiful Spanish landscape. Unlike her previous films, “Alcarràs” and “Summer 1993,” this film also has an element of mystery to it, as Marina attempts to get to the truth of who her parents were and why her father’s family is so reluctant to talk about them. It’s not actually all that mysterious, but because of deep-seated family resentments and long-held secret shame, Marina has to approach getting her answers like a detective, piecing together bits of information from different sources until she has enough to stitch together a narrative and fill in the remaining missing pieces herself. It’s a nice way to add some forward momentum to a story that otherwise doesn’t have much narrative thrust, coasting on vibes, and gorgeous location photography. When everything finally comes together, in a cinematically playful but emotionally devastating extended flashback sequence, the film has earned the indulgence of the moment by patiently setting the table for so long beforehand.
Garcia is a wonder in her film debut, a complete natural able to convey complex, often conflicting emotions with ease. The film is as much about entering a new family as it is about Marina’s search for truth, and the way Garcia observes the behavior of these new family members is where the film is at its most impactful. Everyone is welcoming to Marina (although her grandmother is a bit stand-offish at first), but they all have lengthy, dense histories with each other for which she lacks context, and being in the middle of such petty family squabbles only further disorients her. Marina is simultaneously part of the family and outside it, doing her best to stay afloat in this unfamiliar environment. The ensemble of family members creates a wholly believable family dynamic matching Simón’s observant screenplay, in which every single person believes that they are the only person in the family that Marina should consider worth knowing. The complex relationship dynamics at play here will feel familiar to anyone with a large extended family, especially as the secret family history becomes clearer as the film approaches its conclusion.
Marina learns relatively early on in the film that her father was so sick that he was essentially hidden away for a period in the late ‘80s-early ‘90s. Given the time period, it’s not a stretch to figure out what he was sick with, but the way Simón leads Marina (and the audience) to that point is unexpected. The film’s centerpiece sequence, an extended flashback in which Marina imagines some of what her mother and father went through in the early days of their relationship, uses some stunning, lightly surrealistic imagery to communicate more than words ever could about what they experienced. It’s a captivating sequence but a bit too even-keeled in tone to make a lasting impact.
The film as a whole falls into that same trap, keeping things largely placid and with few emotional highs. As with her previous films, that makes “Romerìa” a pleasantly engaging watch, but for a story about family, legacy, and the ties that bind, it doesn’t make much of an impact. However, as Llúcia Garcia’s debut, it’s a promising start to a promising career.
