Marion Cotillard, a traumatized survivor in Alt Empordà

Special correspondent to the Cannes Film FestivalSeventy-five years after Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, the Costa Brava continues to be a magnet for international film shoots. But this time, we don't see Ava Gardner strolling through Tossa de Mar, but Marion Cotillard in Port de la Selva, in one of the films being presented out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival these days, Karma, directed by her now ex-husband Guillaume Canet, from whom she separated shortly after filming the movie.

In Karma, Cotillard moves away from glamorous roles to play a woman who works in a fish cannery and lives with an Argentinian carpenter (Leonardo Sbaraglia) in a small village in Empordà where it seems the only one who speaks Catalan is the priest and where, during a religious procession, a neighbour comes out onto the balcony to sing a saeta. Jeanne drinks too much, is often absent from work, and has a more intense relationship than normal with her godson, who is actually the son she had just after fleeing the endogamous religious cult in which she grew up, dominated with an iron fist by an imposing and monstrous Denis Ménochet. Traumatized by the experience, Jeanne behaves so unstably that, when her son disappears while she was watching him, the police commissioner investigating the case (Luis Zahera) immediately suspects her, and she decides to return to France to confront her past.

Cotillard displays solidity in a story that Canet wrote for her but in which it is clear, as was already the case in Blood Ties (2013), that no matter how much the French director likes thrillers, he doesn't have a knack for storytelling that demands strength and intensity. It also doesn't help that some of the plot twists that shape the intrigue creak with implausibility, even though the good acting work by the protagonist and Ménochet manages to sustain the film's interest until its predictable end.

The migrant experience in Barcelona

Catalonia is also one of the main settings for Ceniza en la boca, the film directed by actor Diego Luna that was presented in the non-competitive section Special Screenings. Based on the homonymous book by Brenda Navarro, the film accompanies Lucila, who left Mexico for Madrid following in her mother's footsteps and earning a living as best she can with abusive jobs while taking care of a problematic younger brother, until one day she gets tired of it, packs her bags, breaks up with her mother, and moves to Barcelona. There the jobs are just as precarious, but at least she lives in an apartment with other girls and, without family burdens, can go out partying, meet boys, and feel like she's living the life of a girl her age, a dream that ends when tragedy knocks on the door.

It seems incredible that it is a Mexican like Luna who has ended up making the best cinematic portrait of Latin American immigration in Catalonia. Ceniza en la boca captures without paternalism or affectation the difficulties faced by migrants in our country, but also the energy and zest for life of those who do not want to resign themselves to a gray existence, or as Lucila's brother says, "anomás sobrevivir". And the final part of the film, which takes place in Mexico, is honest enough to frame the issue in a larger and deeper context: the systemic violence of one type or another that most migrants have to face, whether they return to their country or not.