Chance, fate or something more painful has made the anniversary of an obvious and very cold ignominy coincide with a small but well identifiable miracle.
Friday will mark six months since one of the areas of the Ca
ñada Real Galiana,
the largest irregular settlement in Spain at the gates of the richest autonomous community of that same Spain, was left without electricity supply.
Two days earlier, on Thursday, the cinemas will premiere
The Last Spring
,
Isabel Lamberti's
first feature film
that reconstructs a piece of the life of the Gabarre-Mendoza family, a family from La Cañada.
The two events, anniversary and film, take place in the same place.
And yet, without actually contradicting themselves, it would seem that they don't even talk about the same thing.
"My idea," says the Dutch-Spanish director, "was never to report a complaint. Although the complaint is there. There are many journalistic reports and news that talk about the same thing. And the idea is always to show a place deeply degraded. There is something of indecent spectacle in that effort to turn misery into spectacle. "
What is seen in the film, on the other hand, and without renouncing the clamor of the obvious, is what without much imagination could be called the other side.
That is, it assists the passing of each and every one of the lives gathered around a family.
They work, fall in love, get up early, play superheroes, despair and, because of all the above, they live.
So easy.
It is not so much, but also, the portrait of a collective shame, that of all of us, as the daily and personal pride of the Gabarre-Mendoza.
"Whenever I consider a project, my interest is the color gray," he
says.
Indeed, life is not summed up neither in a cry of denunciation nor in a slogan for a political campaign.
The film, in fact, does nothing more than follow the trail left years ago, in 2015, in which it was Lamberti's first short film.
Flying I go
told what two brothers let themselves tell.
That was the director's first contact with a Spanish father and a Dutch mother (but with an octogenarian grandmother and aunt still in Spain) with La Cañada and the Gabarres.
He remembers that he saw some images on television of that strange place because of its remoteness and its certainty at the same time and, against all the advice of all, there it was.
They warned him that he was going
to the darkest of places besieged by crime
and a thousand other dangers, and what he found was what is always found among people regardless of their condition: life.
Those kids have grown up and, with them, their entire family.
And all are now the protagonists of The Last Spring.
Agustina and David in 'The Last Spring'.
"We did not want to make an investigative film, nor did we want to tell how terrible everything is, nor did we want to make a film about gypsies with their traditions," clarifies the director to record that in each of her denials the germ of a film is drawn as identifiable and close as unique.
Everything is fable, but so close to the lives of each of the family members, that it is the very sense of truth
that is imposed even more clearly than if it were a regular documentary.
"Each one had to respect the script that was rewritten almost daily. The dialogues were not written, but they act, they interpret themselves with the same talent as pride," says Lamberti, herself with pride.
Last spring
tells of the Gabarre-Mendoza's struggle against bureaucracy, against police inspections, against electricity that goes out, against courses to learn hairdressing, against perhaps early pregnancy, against everything.
Agustina, the mother, despairs at the imminence of the eviction that, after a wait of months, suddenly arrives to be executed in two days.
David, the father, strives for everyone to stay together and, from a small and nervous body, rises on the screen like a titan capable of defeating even a form that demands to be filled out by computer.
But each second of the film also draws with prodigious precision the hope for a new house in which to live.
Everything that happens is perfectly real
(in fact, the film uses as its own material the vicissitudes of the family to its new home and does so with the fear of being overwhelmed by reality itself that does not know of filming plans) and everything that you see is nothing more than a fable.
Also perfect.
The director says that she was always aware of her position.
I did not want to fall into the arrogance of the visitor who comes to the sites to tell how things "really" are.
Nor did he pretend the naivety of the one who glorifies misery as a way of life from also the pride of the tourist with a conscience.
"Each shot is justified by the character.
There are no general shots to calm the conscience of the viewer," he says.
Remember also that when he raised the film he had no idea if his characters were going to know how to act.
They had to get angry, suffer, cry and laugh as they usually did, but they had to do it like the interpreters that were of their lives.
"For a moment, I panicked," he says.
And finally, Lamberti's clearest memory is that of the first time he saw his father cry before the film already made.
"He cried with pride to see his family so well, such good actors of themselves."
It has been six months since a part of the Cañada has been without electricity, in a month there will be elections in the Community of Madrid and on Thursday the miracle
The Last Spring will be released.
Everything fits.
Life sometimes fits.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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