Carla Simón touches the Cannes skies with the magnificent 'Romería'

Special Envoy to the Cannes Film FestivalIn 2016, a year before directing Summer 1993, Carla Simón made a short film, Lagoons, based on texts from the letters she kept from her mother, Neus Pipó, who died of AIDS in 1993, and a fragment of a home movie in which a young and carefree Pipó appeared wiping the sleep from her ears. A decade later, having become the Catalan filmmaker of reference for a new generation of directors, Simón returns to her mother's letters, now transformed into phrases from her mother's diary that a teenager reads during a trip to Galicia to meet her father's family, who died when she was young, just like her mother. The desire to put images into the parents' love story and, above all, to know who those people were that she doesn't remember runs through Pilgrimage, Simón's third feature film, the latest installment in the extraordinary universe the director has built from her intimate family materials.

Premiered this Wednesday in the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the most important launching pad a film can have in the world, Pilgrimage It is the new confirmation of Simón's immense talent as a director in pursuit of the emotional truth of her characters, but also the revelation of the poetic and dreamy dimension of her cinema. A more mature and daring film than Summer 1993 and Alcarràs, and which opens new doors towards registers that escape the strict realism of his first two films.

It must be said that this reinvention is a long time coming: before that there is an first hour and a half in which Pilgrimage follows Martina's efforts to find her place in her father's family and, at the same time, to reconcile the versions she receives about her parents' story, all different and contradictory. Summer 1993, the film traces an inner journey in search of one's own identity in relation to others, staged in a sensitive and profound way; but it also explores how Alcarràs, the internal dynamics of a family, in this case a well-off and dysfunctional one. And without losing sight of class, as demonstrated by the sensational scene of the grandchildren queuing for their grandfather to distribute the holiday tips. Simón is clear: identity cannot be bought or sold.

Newcomers Llúcia Garcia and Mitch bring freshness and ease to a highly choral cast of professional actors that Simón wisely orchestrates, mixing different interpretive colors in a very balanced final composition where perhaps the work of director Alberto Gracia, who plays one of the protagonist's uncles, stands out above all. Unlike the previous films, there is no tearful catharsis or slaps of dignity, but there is a scene that is already among the best of this edition of the festival: the fabulous—in every sense—choreography to the rhythm of I will dance on your grave, from Siniestro Total, which serves as the emotional climax of Simón's heartfelt vindication of the vital, hedonistic, and free generation of their parents, ravaged by heroin and AIDS. It is the most political, most poetic, and, ultimately, most cinematic moment in a film with which Carla Simón takes flight and touches the skies of Cannes.

This decade's 'Brokeback Mountain'

On the big day for Catalan cinema in Cannes, where the short film produced by Ajedrez was also presented For being a witch and poisonous, by Andorran Marc Camardons, the official competition has raised the bar with the solid drama The history of sound, by Oliver Hermanus. It's obvious that this gay drama starring two trendy actors like Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor will be one of the festival's films, a love story between two men united by their love of music and folk songs who met in Boston a century ago and, therefore, live their relationship in secret.

Comparisons with Brokeback Mountain are inevitable, but The history of sound It has its own personality and also a much more literary and restrained style. Perhaps too academic for the taste of festival juries, the film is already a favorite for the upcoming Oscar season. Also in competition is Norwegian Joachim Trier's uneven family drama. Sentimental value It goes from less to more and ends up making the most of the performances of Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve in the ups and downs of this story of reunion between a veteran director who wants to make a film with his actress daughter.