It’s quite easy to romanticize the past, especially when imagining a decade as vibrant and widely renowned as the 80s. It’s also something we can unknowingly be doing at any given moment throughout the course of our own lives. A kernel of beauty can be found in any given scenario. It’s something we often do to protect ourselves from the truth. Our imagination runs wild when we wax poetic over the places or emotions our experiences take us. It’s this romanticizing which forms the basis for Carla Simón’s semi-autobiographical Romería, celebrating its North American premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival. At one point or another growing up, we’ve all wondered what our parents were like when they were younger. In Marina (Llúcia Garcia), this wonder is somewhat satiated in the form of her late mother’s diary. Having grown up with an adoptive family upon the tragic passing of her biological parents, her necessity for a university grant has her take a trip to meet the extended family she never got the chance to grow up alongside. While this may sound rather trite, it’s in Simón’s honest depiction of a pain-ridden journey that Romería sustains itself through familiar story beats. We see what happens when the imaginative stories we wonder and fantasize about are cracked open. It also helps that Simón appears to have quite the eye for capturing beautiful moments to cherish amidst painful circumstances.
The film begins with the awe-inspiring beauty and overwhelming power of the ocean. Through early-digital handheld video footage, we’re seeing something both as we idealize it and as what it actually is. It’s in that natural balance highlighted by the narration which sets off Marina’s story. Marina is travelling to meet the other half of her family for a simple reason, yet it’s one which couldn’t be more complex. Plain and simple, she is looking to be recognized. According to the civil registry office, Marina’s paternal grandparents officially swore that her late father never had any children. It’s a simple driving force for the film, but of course, everything about this dilemma encourages questions and confusion as to what might have happened within this family. Simón doesn’t present many official answers for her audience. She instead opts for veiled asides from various aunts, uncles, cousins, and more. It’s the first of many indicators that this film is mined from deep personal experience. After all, who hasn’t been partially clued into hidden family drama via jokes being made or grudges unceremoniously revealed through passing comments? This may lead to a bit of a frustrating viewing experience at times, but the structure of this film and its script ultimately lend themselves quite well to everything Simón has in store for Marina.
Broken into a series of interrogative parts over the course of a few days, Marina’s trip is quite eventful. Despite the many kindnesses extended to her via her father’s family, you can constantly note the discomfort and unease on Marina’s face. Yet it never feels due to a lack of gratitude. On the contrary, Garcia’s marvelous debut performance perfectly captures feelings of unsureness with regards to Marina’s sense of place. After all, more than anything, this journey is one of both emotional and literal discovery. Beyond hoping to find herself through a side of her family she isn’t familiar with, she’s seeking the ability to literally be seen in the eyes of the government and the people she shares a bond with; whether they all like it or not. Despite the primarily warm welcomes, Romería depicts eye-opening interactions and revelations not with stylistic flourish or spectacle, but with patient filmmaking which embraces passive understanding. Yes, Marina comes to learn more about the lives of her biological parents and familial background through occasional comments said out of turn or in passing. But Simón’s film also understands how often we come to learn things about ourselves and our history through what’s left unspoken. It’s this sort of storytelling where Romería is able to thrive in its occasionally slow-paced narrative. Any grievances with the pace or substance of the first two acts may be completely erased by the emotional, and stylistic, turn of its third act.
Much of Romería takes the form of Simón’s semi-autobiographical reckoning with her own tale. It’s steeped in some very realistic mundanities of young adulthood. But seemingly out of nowhere, in a very exciting turn, the film shifts into fantastical wish-fulfillment. Both the visual language and pacing which Simón has established thus far are torn down for something bordering on ethereal. Throughout Romería, Marina is reading from her mother’s journal. It’s written with such evocative and poetic tendencies. As such, Marina imagines the lives her parents must have led free of any emotional or familial baggage. For a while, she is able to shed all she has learned about her parents second-handedly and live with them as she freely envisioned them. But as is always the case, reality comes crashing down in a way that denies any semblance of living happily ever after. The beautifully-shot fairy tale Simón delivers to her audience is replaced with a haunted musical number and a descent into tragedy. It’s simultaneously mesmerizing and discomforting. The sequence is quite reminiscent of the emotional climax of Aftersun, only here, Simón shows much more yet still provides her audience plenty of open-ended imagery to grapple with our own perceptions about the film and life as a whole.
Despite Romería being such a personal story for Simón, it’s such an effective, relatable tale for the audience. As in love with the freewheeling 80s as this film is, Marina eventually learns the harsh reality her parents lived through while in them. It was an experience full of veiled shame during the AIDS-panic. There was a (sadly still timely) victim-blaming mentality towards the plight of addiction. Marina’s paternal grandparents deliver an emotional cruelty both blatant and unspoken. It’s equally disheartening and telling of what happens when disdain runs down through generations. An inability to understand the people around us results in nothing but pain and a sense of incongruousness. Marina feels she doesn’t belong because she’s been told (either directly or indirectly) as much. Pain from the past only begets pain in the present if it’s not properly reckoned with. And on this journey, Marina learns about the pain her grandparents brought forth and the pain her parents lived with during their own experiences. We often seek the truth hoping for an idealistic outcome. But that’s rarely ever the case. Even so, there’s still potential for us to come out on the other side understanding more about what we were ultimately in search of. Hopefully we can have a much more honest story to tell ourselves. Romería thrives in that honesty and its ultimate refusal to romanticize the past as opposed to seeing the truth and accepting it for what it is.
Romería is celebrating its North American premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival as part of the Main Slate section.