DRAMA; 1hr 54min (Spanish, Catalan, Galician and French with subtitles)
STARRING: Llúcia Garcia, Mitch Martin
Madre dearest: Garcia and Martin
Cutting between then (1983) and now (2004), writer-director Carla Simón draws from her life to untangle a family web of generational secrets. The legwork begins when a bureaucratic glitch nixes the plans of orphaned 18-year-old Marina (Garcia) to study cinema at university in Barcelona. Her only immediate option is to travel to the Spanish coastal city of Vigo (romería being Spanish for pilgrimage) to track down her biological father’s death certificate from the grandparents she has never met. (Spoiler alert: This head trip is a A Very Big Deal.)
Marina’s extended clan welcomes her in the same easy, rackety way in which they mostly live. But what she really needs from them is the answers they’re not immediately inclined to give — to the mystery of what became of her drug-addicted late parents (the timelessly photogenic Garcia also plays Marina’s mother, while Martin does double duty as her father and a present-day cousin), and to her place in the flame-out of their wild-hearted history.
Like spending time with any full-on rellies, the scrappy family energy is a lot to absorb. As the missing pieces of her backstory slot together, Marina is an unshakeable driving force, with Garcia wearing her self-possession like a protective second skin. Her sense of purpose in the search for life-defining answers is the star of both the sprawling bigger picture and the mini-show that bathes it in the poignant light of the past.
