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‘Romería’ Review: A Budding Filmmaker Pursues Her Parents’ Obscured Past in Carla Simón’s Lovely, Pensive Coastal Voyage
Spanish director Carla Simón continues gently to explore jagged crevices of memory and family in her Cannes-selected third feature 'Romería.'
That entails traveling all the way across the country to the city of Vigo on the edge of the Atlantic, where she’s met by her genial uncle Lois (Tristán Ulloa) and a loud gaggle of cousins, who in turn ferry her to the grandparental home — though not before a languid day’s sailing and swimming around the picturesque Cíes Islands, where Marina’s parents spent their own youth frolicking. The paralleling of these twin accounts serves, among other things, to show how far Marina’s path has diverged from that of the parents who never got to see her grow up: Where they were reckless, restless, increasingly drug-dependent hedonists, she’s a quiet observer of life, reserved and straightedge, bemused by the rowdy antics of her oldest cousin Nuno (mononymous actor Mitch) and his cohort. Her first collaboration with world cinema super-DP Hélène Louvart feels entirely natural, the camera mobile but breezily unhurried as it weaves through heaving domestic spaces or around the rusted, characterful cityscape of Vigo, drinking in the milky sunlight and long afternoon shadows, but never resorting to postcard compositions.
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