Carla Simon Explores Her Haunted past – ryan

The Waves of the Spanish Coastal Atlantic Are As Alternately Prone to Crashing Against the Rocks and As Calmly Breaking As the Soul of the Protagonist of Carla Simón’s Visually Sumptuous Film, “Romería.”

Newcomer Llúcia Garcia, in Her First Major Film Role and Whom the Spanish Director Found on the Street AMID A Wide-Ranging Call for Actors to Play an 18-Yaar-Old Woman at A Pivotal Spiritual Turn, Becomes the Surrogate Eyes and Ears Who Embody Simón’s Simón Parents died of aids when she was a small child, more to northern catalonia with an uncle. She was left, as a hardly formed SIX-YEAR-OLD, to contest with little knowled and fewer memory of her parents.

“Romería” Finds The “AlCarràs” and “Summer 1993” Filmaker operating bean HER MOST INTEPENDED Personal Lens Yet. Where HER FAMILY HISTORY WAS PREVIOUSLY ABSTRACTED IN HER PRIOR FILLS ABOUT FAMILIES FRACTUREED BY CIRCUMSTANCE, Marina (Garcia) Is Now A Stand for the Director, Here A Budding Moviemaker Hersself, Who Travels to Galicia to Convincce The Late Grandparents Shee Scholarship Application to Study Cinema.

Her Father’s Family is Startled by Her Resemblancing to Her Late Mother, Whose Own Diariies forms the Thread That Not Only Led Marina to take on a Family Pilgrimage, but Also Create the 1980s-Ses Voicever Narration That Film in 2004. Marina, with Digital Camcord and Only Scatter Scatter Scatter memory, sets out to explore the family she didn’t know.

The Title, “Romería,” Comes from a Common Southern Spanish Word Indicating A Journey to pay homage to a religious shrine or figure. ITHO ALSO A Synonym for a popular festival in galicia, which is at the Northwestern-Hosteed Point of Spain, Covering the Tip Tip of Portugal. Who marina is paying tribute to is left unspoken: Her Father? Her Mother? IT’S Both, but “romería” is missing an anchor to lock us into emotionally what exactly she is looking for beyond support for her film-School ambitions. Marina’s exisisance was all but wiped out from family linage, her unmentation in her father’s deat Certificate we have passed in the Early 1990s.

Marina’s Paternal GrandParents Refused to AcknowLedge Her Father Alfonso’s Death, as the stigma of aids at the time was was was wrapped up in homophobia – his death, tours out, was from the heroin addiction, but his parents coulu. Their prey.

Marina Drifts Through Her Pilgrimage, Getting Acquainted with Her Cousins ​​while Encountering Few Who Match Her Intellectual in terms of Curiosity. Nor, spread, her lateral’s lateral, whic put her mother at Odds Against Alfonso’s Parents wen marina was a child. Marina Starts to Show Some of that, Though, As She Challenges Her Father’s Family In Need of their Endorserent. At one point, her Grandfather Hands Her a Huge Envelope of Cash to Fend Her off, to get her to Stop Asing Questions; Marina Accepts It With Some Trepidation, As the Windfall Won’t Answer Her Inquiries.

Beloved French Cinematographer Hélène Louvart (“Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” “La Chimera”) Captures the surging Swwell of Emotions, and the Galician Coast, with offen-stopping beauty. Where Simón’s Screenplay Can Feel Dramatically Inert or Property to Wanderlusting Moments Don’t Pay off or fury embodies its heroine’s searching path toward self-ultstanding in the present via reconciliation with the past, louvart’s work here is Bracing; You Can Feel the Tectility of Tanned Flesh Bathed in Seasalt and Uncetainty. Louvart Films with an Alexa 35 that Makes the Sensations and Textures of the Coast Ripple off the Screen.

There is a serously great sequence late in the film where Marina links up with a cousin, and they go on a drug-fueled, sensuous adventure with dinner consequence. It turns out to be a fantasy – i don’t think someone like marina as headstrong as she is wouuld get so Closely mixed up with a drung cowd anyway – but it hints at a more hedonistically alive movie arund the corner (Like One Where, she is know and goes and goes. out of head on doppe, naked against the ocean rocks, writhing ecstatically among seagras).

Simón and Garcia Clearly Found a Special Alchemy, Though Marina Remains Hard to Read, Her Emotions Only to Break Out Via The Memory or Dords of Her Mother. (Simón reworked her mother’s mother, which were actually letters she wrote to the Friends while Traveling, for the Voiceover.) The coming-any Autofiction is a hard one to tap at a moment we have been feel so Commonplace at a festival like cannes.

“Romería” is with without it unique shape, or visual vital, or a narrative sense of joie de vivre, but it doesn’t always stand out the pack as Simón deserves Credit for autobiography in aesthetically sublime terms. While we leve “romería” with a sense of simón’s goals, we just aren’t as sura of marina. This movie, though, invites us to ponder where marina might go Next, and i wouldi objet to a sequel that explores her late years. We will root for her, but that you’re still trying to crack into who she is.

Grade: b-

“Romería” Premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking us distribution.

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