QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM SAN SEBASTIAN
Seventeen-year-old Ainara (Blanca Soroa) lives in Bilbao with her controlling father Inaki (Miguel Garcés), his quiet wife Estibaliz, her loving granny Lola and her two younger sisters. Her mother died years earlier, and the mere mention of her existence is a taboo. Instead, passionately caring aunt Maite (Patricia López Arnaiz) fulfils the maternal role, oven to excess. Ainara is very intelligent, sensitive, warm and serene. The entire family was brought up Catholic, however Inaki and Maite – to two de facto providers – are non-believers. Maite recalls with pleasure dodging the nuns at school, while Inaki thinks of the Church as some sort of obscurantist cult.
They panic after Ainara asks to spend two weeks at the local convent with the nuns, during which she will undertake a “journey of discernment”. Surely hanging out with boys and girls of her age is a lot more fun than “wasting time” with “some old women”? Inaki and Maite are hellbent on changing her mind, lest she may want to become a nun and live a cloistered life away from them. Gran is scared she may never see her favourite grandchild again. Plus, who’s going to look after the two little girls, should disaster strike?
A far more pragmatic Inaki becomes a little more accepting of his daughter’s vocation upon finding out that – unlike college – the convent does cost a single penny. Hot-blooded Maite, on the other hand, is convinced that the nuns are brainwashing her niece, and that she’s still too young to make such a life-defining decision. They mull sending Ainara abroad so that she can “experience other things”. They immediately think of Ireland, before abruptly dismissing it: “that’s too Catholic, let’s send her to London instead”.
Ainara is not a swivel-eyed religious freak. In fact, she is the most sensible character in the film,. She allows herself to experiment carnal love with a Mikel, a handsome boy she met in the choir. But it is her love for Jesus that ultimately prevails. All she has to do now is to wait for a call from God. Inaki and Maite perceive such determination as religious fanaticism, and seek to orchestrate the girl’s future in accordance with their own requirements, under the pretext of liberating her. Director and writer Alauda Ruiz de Azúa repeatedly demonstrates that it is not possible to force your personal interpretation of freedom on others. You cannot liberate someone who does not wish to be liberated. And good intentions do not necessarily translate into constructive actions.
Sundays keeps viewers hooked for its entire duration of 115 minutes (nearly two hours). The finely threaded script ensures that the story remains both engaging and credible. Convent life is captured with unmatched respect and tenderness, and without lapsing into romantisation (the fact that the mother superior has a mobile phone to hand all the time is rather contentious). The actors are extremely good without exception, with Soroa and López Arnaiz standing out. The latter won the Silver Shell for Best Actress just last year, for Pilar Palomero’s Glimmers.
Very few European films have proposed becoming a nun as a bona fide and positive life choice in the past few decades. Countless movies showcase the institution as oppressive, abusive or downright perverse. Nuns have earned notoriously negative representations, from Ken Russell’s horny sisters in The Devils (1971) and Pedro Almodovar’s LSD-addicted, Lesbo-manipulative mother superior in Dark Habits (1983) all the way to Peter Mullan’s sadistic prioresses in The Magdalene Sisters (2002). A remarkable exception is Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida (2013), yet it’s literally only in the final minute that the protagonist decides to give up a “free” life in favour of nunnery. Sundays presents the convent as peaceful and safe space, and the priests and nuns as reasonable people who do not manipulate women into novitiation.
The history of the Catholic Church in Spain is a turbulent and hardly laudable one. This is where the Inquisition began, and the Holy See maintained a very cosy relationship with dictator Francisco Franco throughout his entire reign of terror. It is interestig that a 47-year-old Basque director, now on her third feature, should choose to redeem the institution. Sundays, however, is neither a religious nor proselytising endeavour. It merely uses a faith deemed anathema to modern Spanish values in order to demonstrate that the concept of freedom is a relative and negotiable one. It is a film to be appreciated by believers and non-believers alike.
Appreciation does not necessarily translate into comfort. Sundays is not a feel-good film, but instead a very provocative one. You probably won’t leave the cinema with a broad smile on your face, but instead asking yourself fundamental questions about your perceived notions of freedom. This is a movie of profound emotional and moral complexity. The ending is a real punch in the face. This is extremely mature and universal filmmaking.
Sundays is in the Official Competition of the 73rd San Sebastian International Film Festival. It won the Golden for Best Picture, the event’s top prize and rightfully earned acolade.
