Alcarràs movie review (2023) | Little White Lies

Alcar­ràs

03 Jan 2023 / Released: 06 Jan 2023

Words by Caitlin Quinlan

Directed by Carla Simón

Starring Ainet Jounou and Jordi Pujol Dolcet

Young person in floral top amidst green leaves and pomegranates.
Young person in floral top amidst green leaves and pomegranates.
4

Anticipation.

Award-winning follow-up to Simón’s beguiling Summer 1993.

4

Enjoyment.

A beautiful, introspective and wise film about family, business, culture and landscape.

4

In Retrospect.

Simón’s on a major roll. Bring on the next one.

A fam­i­ly toil on a peach farm threat­ened with destruc­tion in Car­la Simón’s ele­gant drama.

Peach­es glow like tiny suns in the Cata­lan vil­lage of Alcar­ràs. They hang lush and ripe from the hun­dreds of trees that form the Solé family’s orchard, wait­ing to be picked by famil­iar hands. Sol­id ground, beloved land,” sings the grand­fa­ther in praise of the earth that has fed and nur­tured his house­hold for decades, and in mourn­ing for the dev­as­ta­tion that looms on the horizon.

In Alcar­ràs, the sec­ond fea­ture from direc­tor Car­la Simón, a farm­land under threat caus­es a hard­work­ing fam­i­ly unit to splin­ter. A man’s promise years before is now no longer enough to secure the Solés’ own­er­ship of the orchards and the legal pro­pri­etor of the land wants to raze the fruit trees and install solar pan­els in their place.

Broth­er Quimet (Jor­di Pujol Dol­cet) con­tin­ues with the har­vest while sib­lings and spous­es also try to main­tain nor­mal­i­ty, aware that this sum­mer will be their last. The film strikes a deft bal­ance between idyl­lic rem­i­nis­cence and melan­choly for a cher­ished place, mean­der­ing through the nar­ra­tive to dwell on the hide­aways and favourite spots of the family.

It is also a poignant tale about the impact of indus­tri­al devel­op­ment on agri­cul­ture, as Simón nods, per­haps too briefly, to the pre­car­i­ty of work for Black labour­ers. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy of Daniela Cajías com­ple­ments these par­al­lels as the village’s hazy, gold­en light hov­ers between ide­al­is­tic mem­o­ry and oppres­sive heat. With the grow­ing fam­i­ly resent­ments, teenage inse­cu­ri­ties and Small Town ennui on top of this, the film becomes an incred­i­bly lay­ered and mov­ing reflec­tion on com­ing to terms with your posi­tion in a time and a place and what to do when the ground crum­bles beneath you.

Where Simón’s pre­vi­ous film, Sum­mer 1993, had orphan Fri­da as its emo­tion­al focal point, Alcar­ràs takes a broad­er look at the Solés as a group, expert­ly incor­po­rat­ing small­er, indi­vid­ual nar­ra­tives into their cri­sis as a com­mu­ni­ty. Simón’s knack for bring­ing beau­ti­ful­ly nat­u­ral­is­tic per­for­mances out of actors (in this case, non-pro­fes­sion­al), and par­tic­u­lar­ly chil­dren, is clear again here; young Iris (Ainet Jounou) is one of the film’s high­lights, cheeky and full of bright imagination.

The pow­er of Alcar­ràs lies in the filmmaker’s care for and under­stand­ing of her sub­ject which, as with Sum­mer 1993, is a sto­ry tak­en from her own life and exam­ined on screen with a deceiv­ing charm that gives way to a deeply emo­tion­al nar­ra­tive. It is a joy to watch, too, for all its moments of sim­plic­i­ty and prac­ti­cal work: as moth­ers and sis­ters peel peach­es with par­ing knives and encase them in glossy syrups, as fruits tum­ble in their hun­dreds from buck­ets into pal­lets, or as par­ents teach chil­dren how to find the ripest crop, pass­ing down their lega­cy at every turn.

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