Look out for this mas­ter­class in nat­u­ral­is­tic screen acting

Nat­u­ral­is­tic act­ing is a mys­te­ri­ous craft. On the one hand, a per­former who uses this tech­nique draws on recog­nis­able behav­iours. On the oth­er, they chan­nel enough mag­i­cal touch­es to enter­tain. This bal­anc­ing act is one that many actors can’t man­age, and instead fall into ham­mi­ness, wood­en­ness or oth­er tells that show the actor behind the role. A mas­ter­class in how to light­ly inhab­it a character’s skin comes cour­tesy of Zama star and Pedro Almod­ó­var reg­u­lar Lola Dueñas in Span­ish direc­tor Celia Rico Clavellino’s debut fea­ture Jour­ney to a Mother’s Room.

The film is a domes­tic minia­ture about the rela­tion­ship between Estrel­la and her teenage daugh­ter Leonor (Anna Castil­lo) as the pair try to forge ways for­ward after a sig­nif­i­cant bereave­ment. The­mat­i­cal­ly it plays like a Span­ish-lan­guage Lady Bird and is sim­i­lar­ly woven out of well-observed details from the fault lines of fam­i­ly life. Estrel­la is a soft­er char­ac­ter than Lau­rie Metcalf’s caus­tic Mar­i­on, with a gift for tak­ing a split-sec­ond before line reads to facial­ly process infor­ma­tion in the process cre­at­ing com­ic ten­sion: how will she react? Dueñas is well-matched by Castil­lo as her on-screen daugh­ter. Leonor is a shy and ten­der home­body torn between an urge to make her way in the world by mov­ing to Lon­don and the solace of famil­iar com­forts in small-town Spain.

It is refresh­ing to see a film that gives its char­ac­ters work­ing-class jobs which define the rhythms of their days and the nature of their prospects. Castil­lo has made a scrupu­lous­ly coher­ent film ensur­ing that the mate­r­i­al sit­u­a­tion of her char­ac­ters match­es their income. Props, cos­tumes and the house, which is the dom­i­nant set­ting, serve to flesh out Estrel­la. She is a fac­to­ry work­er, well-liked for her smile, with a prag­ma­tism that feels both mater­nal and eco­nom­ic. Indeed, some of the best plea­sures of the film are locat­ed in the ampli­fi­ca­tion of pass­ing details. In one scene, a mys­te­ri­ous food item cov­ered in sil­ver foil is giv­en to Leonor. After we dis­cov­er that Leonor loves ham, when an iden­ti­cal sil­ver foil-wrapped item is hand­ed over we know it is a ham sand­wich. Castil­lo finds ways to devel­op her film world through what would be throw­away details in a less atten­tive director’s hands.

As for the ghost that both moth­er and daugh­ter are try­ing to elude, his pres­ence is felt not through melo­dra­mat­ic ref­er­ences, but through pro­sa­ic reminders: clothes that still haunt a wardrobe, a mobile phone com­pa­ny still try­ing to make con­tact. Noth­ing rings false. Every­thing is trans­posed from the the true bureau­crat­ic and prac­ti­cal loose ends left after life ends.

The pres­sures that dri­ve her char­ac­ters relate to dai­ly sur­vival yet unlike the Dar­d­enne broth­ers, whose social real­ism con­tains social cri­tiques, Castil­lo is more inter­est­ed in bring­ing to the sur­face the human­i­ty and humour that can pros­per in a lov­ing micro­cosm. As the film pro­gress­es, Estrella’s hori­zons broad­en in small, mov­ing ways. A gen­tle­man caller comes seek­ing her bolero-mak­ing ser­vices, she becomes addict­ed to What­sApp. Dueñas occu­pies every inch of a new ground dis­cov­ered with the hes­i­tant charm of an ingénue, cre­at­ing a char­ac­ter of an old­er woman who is also a per­ma­nent beginner.

Jour­ney to a Mother’s Room screened at the 2018 San Sebas­t­ian Film Fes­ti­val. For more info vis­it sanse​bas​tian​fes​ti​val​.com