QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM SAN SEBASTIAN
This two-hour documentary takes a kaleidoscopic peek into the lives of people at Vallbona (Catalan for “Good Valley”), a small roadside municipality in the outskirts of Barcelona. And a place gradually swallowed by the constant new developments. People started inhabiting it decades earlier when the fields were still tranquil and remote. Then outsiders began erecting houses without a permit. Soon came the motorway and a major rail line. The current residents live mostly in nondescript residential blocks. There are few entertainment options other than the sparse green areas. The absence of buses at night means these working class families have little opportunity to escape after the sun sets. “Maybe I should buy myself a donkey”, jokes one of the inhabitants.
The residents come from various countries and speak manifold languages. Locals speak Castilian and Catalan. A Brazilian woman born to Italian parents speaks Italian in order to make her husband “horny”. An elderly woman shows a child how to plant a quince tree in Galician. A Ukrainian refuge and a Russian woman discuss the latest developments in the Ukraine in their Slavonic parlance, and celebrate the fact that they can speak any language they wish here, A Muslim family shares gossip in Arabic. An Indian family shares culinary secrets in their own language. A Black family recalls how their father had to flee political persecution, also in their native tongue. Interestingly, the language of Shakespeare is entirely absent here.
There are moment of casual and spontaneous humour, warmth and also a touch of unwarranted bigotry. A man who loves talking to plants compares them to women. A teenage girl breaks the news of her first boyfriend to her nosey mum and friend. A kind woman expresses her love for “vibrant” gypsies. Her husband shakes his head in disapproval, before uttering a familiar excuse: “I’m not a racist”. A Muslim girls remembers being called a “morita” (a very pejorative “little Moor”). The moments of most intense beauty are when the families get together on the rocks of a nearby brook and the unkempt woods surrounding it. They are unfazed by the fast-speed trains rushing past. The hope that the government might open a station there for their mere 1,300 residents is a remote one that nobody even considered, an inquisitive woman finds out during a community meeting.
The vast majority of the characters – except for the elderly Guillem and Carles – are never named, crafting a sense of collectiveness to the film. These individual stories are only relevant in the context of the community, the film seems to suggest. Black-and-white pictures reveal that some families settled there a very long time ago, and they remain profoundly attached to a neighbourhood where few of us would seek to live. Multiple cameras capture the action from various angles, while keeping a respectful distance from its characters. There are glitzy antics and technical wizardry. Instead, it is austerity that prevails. This is a non-narrative, observational documentary. Sixty-five yea-old Spanish director José Luis Guerin – best remembered for meditative urban transformation doc En Construcción (2001) – neither exoticises nor victimises his subjects. These are snapshots of happy lives at the margins. And ode to the willing casualties of urban chaos.
A very peculiar and unexpected development triggers momentary panic as residents quickly grab their possessions and run away lest the police harasses them. Their notion of entertainment and their sense of freedom are both frail and elusive. Has this community reached a point of no return, or should residents continue to seek love and redemption in the only place many of them have ever called home? Good Valley Stories does not provide any answers. This viewing experience feels like a weekend-long stay with a distant cousin who you never met before. An enlightening watch, if barely an innovative piece of filmmaking.
Good Valley Stories is in the Official Competition of the 73rd San Sebastian International Film Festival.
