QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM SAN SEBASTIAN

Ramon (Antonio de la Torre) is unlikely to make it until next summer. Oxygen tubes are permanently attached to his nose and he can barely stand. His hands tremble and his voice is faint. He has stoically accepted that the end is nigh. He does not scream, wail or lament his condition. He remains mostly unfazed by the presumably overbearing pain. The most hurtful part of his predicament is watching those around him suffer, and the knowledge that he will not see his adolescent daughter Madelen (Marina Guerola) grow up. Such confession is both sobering and heartbreaking.

Isabel (in an agonisingly real performance by Patricia López Arnaiz) is Madelen’s mother, and a former partner of Ramon now happily married to a loving man called Ignacio (Julián López). He looks like a slightly younger and more preened version of Ramon (the scruffy beard suggests that the dying man hasn’t used a razor blade for at least a year). Isabel reproaches her daughter for missing her studies in order to care for her ailing father. Until she comes to the realisation that solidarity isn’t a choice. At such difficult moments, it is mandatory that humanity should prevail. At first, she watches Ramon from behind the door, her facial expression contorted paralysed with a blend of fear, pity and impotence, her broad smile is printed with puerile dissimulation,. She genuinely wants to convey a sense of normality, yet she is clearly the one suffering the most. Gradually, she allows herself to blend into the gloomy household. Her tense smile morphs into a more casual grin.

Filmed mostly indoors and with scarce artificial lighting, Glimmers finds hope, beauty and even joy in the darkest of places. A few rays of light break into an apartment covered with old books, riven by extensive corridors, and pungent with the smell of Ramon’s mortality: he hasn’t bathed in several days. Ramon’s history is in every nook and cranny of this gloomy urban apartment. The many novels he wrote, Madelen’s old child drawings, mementos from a time long gone, events now firmly confined to the past.

Palomero spares viewers from the most excruciating moments. There is no sight of blood, unbearable pain (instead Ramon dismisses people’s concerns with a succinct: “it hurts just a little) and desperation. This is a movie about coming to terms with our mortality, and the acceptance that premature death too is an integral part of life. There’s a glimmer of optimism in the twilight, A remarkably simple and familiar story with a clearcut takeaway, and told with the utmost humanistic flair.

Spanish women filmmakers are at the forefront of realism in the Iberian nation, consistently creating films exuding authenticity. This includes Palomero’s own Motherhood (2022), Isabel Coixet’s Un Amor (2023), Carla Simon’s Summer 1993 (2018) and Alcarras (2022), to name just a few. While each one of these artists have their own elicitation techniques (Simon opts for non-professionals from her own Catalonian village, while Coixet travels across Spain with more established actors, and Palomero uses a mixture of various techniques), they have one characteristic in common: the performances boast a degree of spontaneity unmatched in present-day Spain. The dialogues are fluid, the interactions are natural and full of emotion.

Glimmers just premieres in the Official Competition of the 72nd San Sebastian International Film Festival.