In Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón's new film, Romería, the focus is, once again, her family history, just like her debut, Summer 1993 (2017). This autobiographical film tells a story of Marina (Llucía Garcia), an 18 year old orphan, traveling to the Northwestern port city of Vigo, to reconnect with her paternal family. The year is 2004. She hopes to gain recognition as a legitimate daughter of her dead father on paper, so she can get a scholarship to study film. Navigating knotty family relations with her mother's diary as a guide, Marina learns the truth about her deceased parents and how they were treated by the family when they were alive.
Marina is greeted by her uncle Lois, his wife and three sons who live on a houseboat. She would be staying with them while visiting Vigo. Nuno (Mitch Martin), one of Lois's sons, being around the same age as Marina, becomes close. After meeting various aunts and uncles and cousins, Marina discovers many discrepancies in their stories about her parents and what she was told growing up and also her mother's diary. For instance, Lois tells her that her parents lived in an apartment in Playa Samil, a beach overlooking the isle of Cie, but her mother's diary indicates that they lived in the nearby isle of Toralla, and she finds out that her father died in 1992, not in 1987 like she was told when she was growing up.
Marina grows closer to uncle Iago (Alberto Garcia), a motorcycle riding, black sheep of the family, as he reminds of them of Marina's father. She gets a cold reception from her grandmother while her grandfather gives her an envelope full of cash for her studies. She refuses, but relents when he persists. She is disappointed to learn that her grandparents kept her sick father in the house, isolated, away from prying eyes, after he contracted AIDS and dying. Iago explains that back then, it was a taboo subject and people hid their sick family members in order to save face.
Marina sneaks out of the houseboat one night with the help of Nino and sneaks into her grandparents' house to return the cash envelope. Then Marina takes a rowboat to visit Toralla, where her parents once lived.
Now we are introduced to her parents in the 80s, played by Garcia and Martino, playing double roles, living their carefree, bohemian life on the beach. It becomes increasingly clear that they were both heroin addicts and Iago was in the scene as well, but survived but Marina's parents didn't.
Romería is a pretty film, despite its heavy subject. Shot by the great French cinematographer Hélène Louvart (La Chimera, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, The Beaches of Agnés), the film captures the sunkissed Atlantic coast of Vigo, as well as naturally lit interiors. The dream-like sequence in Toralla, where young lovers (Marina's parents) spend their carefree days is gorgeous to look at. The camera adores luminous LIucia Garcia, who is in every scene, often in her red dress with her cute bangs, walking around with her little digital camera.
But Romeria is a little too precious and picture-perfect for me to fully embrace. The film's visual beauty undercuts its serious subjects - The heroin addiction and AIDS crisis in the 80s and the society's collective shameful response to it. Romería is Simón's personal reconstruction of the incidents that ultimately robbed her childhood. But as with Summer 1993, it feels like a heavily sanitized version of recounting a family history from a doe-eyed, little goody two-shoes innocent child's point of view.
Romerîa opens in theaters June 26 in New York and July 1 in Los Angeles. National rollout to follow.
