Romeria review: Semi-autobiographical saga dilutes the complexities of the past

HT at IFFK: Carla Simón turns the camera towards her family to chronicle the secret lives of her parents.

Romeria review
Cast: Llúcia Garcia, Mitch, Tristán Ulloa, Alberto Gracia, Miryam Gallego, Janet Novás, José Ángel Egido
Direction: Carla Simón
Rating: ★★★

Romeria premiered at the International Film Festival of Kerala.

Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón burst into the festival scene as a major voice after her second feature, Alcarras, won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Her films are rich in interpersonal dynamics with strong showcases of domestic life, made with a lightness of touch. These qualities are somehow missing in her new film Romeria, which played at the International Film Festival of Kerala. It is certainly Simon's most personal and ambitious film yet, but there's a jarring sense of disconnect that never meets the tonal swings.

The premise

Romeria takes time to build its world, as we settle down on the syntax of the film's episodes divided into chapters. Our protagonist Marina (newcomer Llúcia Garcia is a wonderful discovery) cannot apply for scholarship to study cinema unless her paperwork is in place, which isn't because her family is not in place. She realises that her father doesn’t exist in the papers, as their names are somehow left out in the family documents.

With quiet and unhurried introspection, Simon gathers the autobiographical material and gives shape to Marina's search for the truth, her parents, and in the same breath, her identity. She visits her father's side of the family, and points out the many inconsistencies in the timeline of their memories. It is only her uncle Lois (Tristán Ulloa) and his family who are somehow sympathetic towards her, and the more she seeks answers, she comes to see the bad blood amidst it all.

Romeria is pensive and thoughtful, filled with gorgeous camerawork from from Hélène Louvart. The voiceover recording her mother's diary entries glides through the film and gives it generosity, and is the only lens with which we enter Marina's silences and find the guiding light through it all. There's a vibrancy in the way Romeria moves, in how it inhabits Marina's search and turns that into more of an odyssey through the country's past, threading together the AIDS crisis in particular. None of the characters that populate the film are worthy of trust. But when the moment Marina gets her answers and stands firm, doesn't feel earned.

Final thoughts

Simón turns back the time, but what does she seek in those moments? The film's metamorphosis in the third act is rather heavy handed, and unfortunately incurious in the manner it deals with substance abuse. Marina seeks answers yes, but the film never coheres towards a larger socio-economic context and becomes thinly perfunctory. Simon's interest in the past is not enough, it demands gravity and more importantly, conflict.

Romeria works in brief moments of dramatic and emotional heft but is inadvertently undone by the end. The past is never a one way road. Simon knows it, but sadly her film isn't ready to tackle those realities.