Thomas Wolfe famously wrote “You can never go home again”, defining the sad realisation that most places or periods in life are temporary, despite their importance. A 20-year-old woman makes that painful discovery in Spanish drama Notes On A Summer.

Katia Borlado plays Marta, a young woman who recently left her home in the Asturias coastal community in Spain for the country’s bustling capital of Madrid. A committed academic, she lives in happy domesticity with her doting new boyfriend Leo (Antonio Araque). Feeling torn about her direction in life, she takes a break from responsibility by returning home for a wedding. Reconnecting with family and friends, she also runs into Pablo (Álvaro Quintana), her rough-and-ready ex whom she never quite got over. The pair rekindle their romance, adding to Marta’s uncertainty about where her life is heading. This grows greater when Leo shows up unannounced.

What the film does very elegantly is portray the crossroads in life many young adults face. The push and pull between what you feel you should be doing in life and the sometimes irrational whims of our heart. In Marta’s case, that is personified in a tale of two places, and two men.

First, Madrid, filled with the opportunity and stability she seeks, portrayed through classrooms and busy public transport. Through small vignettes charting everyday activities like building furniture, going on walks or teaching classes, we see the safety to which Marta feels drawn. It’s echoed in her relationship with Leo, a nice, caring guy who treats her exactly as she wishes to be treated, but lacking the spark that makes her feel alive.

Then there’s Asturias, symbolised through beaches and parties, gilded with the nostalgia of childhood memories. It’s vibrant, exciting, but feels ultimately doomed as the coastal region crumbles from years of economic decline. It’s an interesting comment on how places like this fade away, as young people seek a future that their home simply cannot provide. Mirroring this, her relationship with Pablo is exotic, passionate, and physical, but both seem haunted by the idea that it is destined to fail.

The confusion as to whether she wants to come home, or temporarily escape that reality, builds in Marta as the story goes on, and is shown in a graceful performance from Borlado. She spends the film in a kind of duality, unwilling to make a decision on either man in her life as it feels like saying goodbye to so much more than a relationship. While little is explained in dialogue, gestures and unspoken emotions take you on a journey that builds to a climax that is quiet, like most of the film, but powerful nonetheless.

Overall, this is a simplistic story, but one with an emotional truth that will ring true for many. Our complicated relationships with the heart and the home have rarely been explored with such beauty.

Notes on a Summer streams for free during the entire month of December as part of ArteKino – just click here now for more information.