QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM KARLOVY VARY
Traumatised Gaia (Claud Hernández) has retreated into a shell. He dropped out of school and barely talks to her doting – and often overbearing – father (Alex Brendemühl). He happens to be her only relative: we never see nor hear about other family members. Nobody knows what happened to Gaia. Until one day her prehistory teacher gets the timid girl to open up. Gaia confesses that she had sex multiple times at the archeological site with her boyfriend and schoolmate Diego, and that one time intercourse only happened because he insisted on it. He never forced himself upon her, though. The teacher explains to a perplexed Gaia that nevertheless this constitutes rape.
The news infuriate the father. He abandons his bakery in order to look after his daughter. But Gaia resists his overprotection. “Please stop looking at me all the time”, she tells her father, while also insisting that he should return to work. His patriarchal devotion borders on the abusive. At times it seems that both Diego and Gaia’s father view our protagonist as a personal possession (a fetish rag doll for the former, or porcelain saint on a pedestal for the latter). The father yells uncontrollably and insults Diego’s mother Marta on the telephone. Such protection tactics feel uncomfortably similar to the abuse itself. Empathy eventually prevails above toxic masculinity, and father and daughter begin to bond. And she gradually gathers the strength to call the abuse by its name (rape) and perhaps even to face the man who nearly destroyed her life.
Don’t expect vertiginous twists and turns. The focus here is on on the repercussions of tragedies and big moments. The director opts not to illustrate the most dramatic developments at all. The sexual abuse is never seen, and there is no court room scene. Instead, the film’s biggest face-off and also its most powerful scene is a heated discussion between Marta and Gaia. The mother represents an old-fashioned and increasingly frowned-upon mentality: that a woman shouldn’t necessarily have pleasure in sex, and that it’s ok for her to engage in intercourse even if that isn’t her will.
The fact that the rape scene is never portrayed or even discussed in detail – all we know is that Diego insisted on sex and that Gaia felt repulsed – leaves a lot of questions unanswered, inviting viewers to reach their own conclusions. What is very clear is that sex is a very powerful weapon in the establishment of gender relations.
Fifty-year-old Catalonian director Pere Vilà Barceló returns to filmmaking after a seven-year break, and he is guaranteed to please his fans and win new hearts alike. When a River Becomes the Sea is a profound and gently-flowing piece of slow cinema. The takes are extremely long and the cuts sparse, and the entire movie boasts a whopping duration of more than three hours (183 minutes). The honest and intelligently threaded dialogues, the moments of meditative silence and also two scenes of complete darkness (just words and panting build tension to excellent results) serve to justify the unusual runtime. A highly commendable movie.
When a River Becomes the Sea just premiered in the Crystal Globe section of the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
