Alcarràs

Alcarràs is a richly textured and quietly absorbing ensemble drama that echoes the work of Robert Altman and John Sayles. Dense in ideas and characterization, intoxicating in visual style, Alcarràs recalls the canvas of Robert Altman’s Cookie’s Fortune and John Sayles Lone Star about tightly knit communities living day to day as external forces arise within their community. Written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Carla Simon (Summer 1993), the film focuses on a peach farmer and his family in the small village of Alcarràs coming to terms with corporate interests and market forces outside of their control.

Simon’s visual style instantly recalls the aesthetics of the hot bathed Italian countryside of Bernando Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty and Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name.  The films landscapes become a character in the film. The cinematography by Daniela Cajías provides intoxicating imagery and she shoots the film almost like a fading paradise where the vibrant colors will soon be replaced by silicone, aluminum, and glass. The ensemble characters of the central family and villagers are mostly non-professionals, but there is a naturalism to the exchanges that make it feel vivid and its woozy tone as well. The film is spoken in the Catalan-language, and it’s about a band of peach farmers and their family who band together in attempts to combat the corporate takeover of their land. The film was the top winner of the Golden Bear Award at last year’s Berlin Film Festival and was Spain’s entry for the best international film at the Oscars.

While the ideas of capitalism and corporatism displayed in the film aren’t subtle, the film is more resonant on the human side as Simon’s film becomes a mournful chronicle of a modern farming community trying to adjust to the changes as they live day by day. Their traditions and livelihoods are phased out by endless changes in technology, market forces, and higher demands that human labor just can’t keep up with. Simon who co-wrote the script with Arnau Vilario, together have crafted a melancholic and equally luminous drama of modification in the current era of corporate power and economic uncertainty, all told in the perspective of a family dealing with other internal conflicts within and outside of the family. Suggesting a family drama at its core that is partially told through the perspective of a middle-aged farmer named Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet). The rest of the story is told through his family members who all reside in a rented house that has its own relaxing swimming pool in the background surrounded by ravishing peach trees.

The setting is early summer, and the crops of the peach orchards are about to harvest. It’s very challenging work that is easy for one to suffer from dehydration and heat exhaustion. They also must fend off a fluffle of rabbits who chew up and ruin their crops during late hours. The entire family helps with the harvest including Quimet’s wife Dolors (Anna Otin) as well as their son Roger (Albert Bosch), who also helps with the chores around the house. Their teen daughter Mariona (Xenia Roset) is pre-occupied with auditioning for a dance number for an upcoming talent show at the village’s upcoming town fair, and their youngest sister, Iris (Ainet Joanou) enjoys running around the farmland with other local children. Their favorite hangout place is an abandoned car, which is eventually towed away from adults outside the village. We quickly learn that they are with a corporate chain that wants to offer low prices for Quimet’s fruit to sell to supermarkets. To make matters worse, Quimet finds out that all the land now owns to local landowner, Pinol (Jacob Diare), who holds the land in which Quimet’s father Roegelio (Joseph) had a agreement with the land that was never in writing. Eventually Pinol sold the land, in which the fruit is being sold to supermarket chains, but the land is being sold for solar panels, for which Quimet will get a cut.

The corporate consolidation brings sudden hardship to the family. The entire family holds various opinions, and it leaves Quimet feeling powerless and indifferent. Quimet ends up taking his anguish out on his own staff, even laying off his own workers. Eventually, Quimet feels empowered with all the regressive corporate interests which leads to a notable sequence in the film of other local farmers and villagers dumping a pile of peaches at the corporate offices. It’s there where you realize Simon has made a deeply humane film, one that is both measured and observant on the human condition.

The structure of the ensemble piece that jumps from one subplot of the family members to the other, and it gives a rather insightful look at a Catalina community. While some of the subplots feel more engaging than others, it’s actually the young kids’ stories that ignite the most. Especially the subplot involving Mariona and her teenage turmoil. That’s why the narrative comes off a little slight because Simon is examining a lot here. Her film also doesn’t offer easy solutions, it raises more questions and examines conundrums, if anything. The film ponders questions on how livelihoods could be destroyed by green solar companies and green energy start-ups that exchange some human suffering for the better good? It’s an intricate drama that examines how neo-liberal solutions to combat climate change are by using the same methods of corporate takeovers that oil companies used to use. Ultimately with all the ideas being explored, Simon’s film is a portrait of sage wisdom. Both elegiac and engaging, her vision is a tribute to family and farmers, and the story comes to terms on how the old way of life is eventually going to have to modify itself into the ages of modernity.

Alcarràs is now playing in limited theaters.