In her tenderly heartbreaking and acutely observed debut film, Summer 1993, director Carla Simón evoked both a strong sense of place in the Spanish countryside setting and deftly filtered familial turmoil and tragedy through the wide-eyed gaze of the six-year-old Frida, who struggles to cope with the tectonic shifts occurring around her. In her follow-up film, Alcarràs, Simón uses the landscape not only as a picturesque backdrop but a metaphorical one as well, upon which the changes in social mores and neighborly bonds have surreptitiously changed from the end of the Spanish Civil War to our current state of 21st-century late capitalism. The perspective here, however, is constantly roving rather than fixed to a particular individual, leading to a film that is more intricate and challenging than its predecessor. But it also keeps the audience at arm’s length, forcing them to impassively trace the various, and sometimes frustratingly opaque, narrative arcs from an emotional remove.
Despite its historical underpinnings, Alcarràs takes place entirely in the present, remaining distinctly of the moment as it follows the Solés, a family of farmers who see their land gradually slipping out of their control due to the refusal of a new generation of neighbors to honor a decades-old verbal contract to work on their land. At the same time, the Solés’ patriarch, Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet), along with other local farmers, protest the Spanish government’s systemic changes that continue to squeeze out the profit margins from small farmers, who each day become less able to compete with global corporations that simply price them out of the market.
As with Summer 1993, Alcarràs conveys much of this information indirectly, leaving the audience to glean an understanding of the various sociopolitical elements and familial tensions through snippets of seemingly casual conversations or through the body language glimpsed in wide shots. And fortunately, Simón doesn’t merely settle for a simplistic story of large corporate interests squashing the little guy nor does she entirely villainize the Solés’ neighbors, the Pinyols, who, while forcing the destruction and removal of all their tenants’ orchards, do offer them the opportunity to use the land to work with solar panels rather than fruit. It doesn’t sound like a half-bad deal and Simón’s decision to present the Solé family’s alternative as working with green energy rather than, say, having their land used for fracking, further complicates their dilemma and where audience sympathies ultimately lie.
For all the ostensible drama inherent in the Solés’ situation, Alcarràs is a surprisingly low-key affair, far more attuned to the quotidian rhythms of life on the farm than the larger forces at work causing countless families in the area to change their way of life. As such, the film is both mournful of the cultural loss being faced—further strengthened by the inclusion of the Solés’ singing traditional folk songs and reminiscing about how their family first obtained the land—and empathetic to the family members who are more willing than Quimet to adjust to the changing of the times.
Free of didacticism and content to remain true to its slice-of-life portrait of a traditional way of life being confronted with the demands of modernity, Alcarràs presents an intriguing, if familiar, quandary in a compelling and unique manner. And unlike so many recent films about the uprooting caused by the ever-extending reach of capitalism, Simón’s sophomore effort resists tipping the scales or preaching to the choir through a blunt demonization of forces that, while often evil (or at least indifferent), are also deserving of a nuanced examination. If only the film’s nuanced, kaleidoscopic approach to the material didn’t come at the cost of clarity and specificity, Alcarràs could’ve been a truly special work. Instead, it’s a solid follow-up for Simón that again shows a lot of potential in the young filmmaker.
Photo courtesy of MUBI
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