Written and directed by Carla Simón, with her mother’s diary in hand, Marina’s search for official documents for university leads her to her biological family on the Atlantic coast. What starts as an administrative quest reveals long-buried family secrets. Starring: Llúcia Garcia, Mitch Martín, Tristán Ulloa, Alberto Gracia, Miryam Gallego, Janet Novás, José Ángel Egido and Marina Troncoso.
One thing that immediately cannot be denied is that they chose a perfectly picturesque location to shoot Romería. Having that simple beauty of the sea juxtaposed with the absolute mess of Marina’s (Llúcia Garcia) family situation is a really nice contrast. Carla Simón’s directorial style on the whole does well to match the two, capturing some great landscapes while also peppering in plenty of tension, resentment and the search for truth.
Llúcia Garcia gives an excellent performance to lead Romería, it’s emotional and sympathetic, while bringing through that strong note of youth. It’s genuinely surprising that it marks Garcia’s acting debut, she definitely has a lot to bring to the table, and it will be interesting to see what she does next. Mitch Martín makes a great pairing as your classic reckless yet sweet youth. Alberto Gracia is definitely a standout, the brokenness he brings to this role really helps to expand the emotional complexity and to explore the grief that haunts this family.
Everything goes swimmingly, there’s a nicely smooth flow to the progression, the tone is really consistent, until Simón decides to take an extremely unnecessary sojourn into the past. This then becomes akin to a hallucinatory tangent that takes over the entire last act of Romería. One that sees Llúcia Garcia and Mitch Martín uncomfortably switching from their present day roles as cousins to playing Marina’s parents in the past. It’s a strange choice, especially considering the two in present day already had a weirdly flirty relationship for blood relatives. The whole adventure itself feels a touch experimental and inherently clashes with the grounded nature of the film otherwise, it’s disappointing.
For the most part Romería is a captivating, well shot and a nicely complicated exploration of family secrets. Llúcia Garcia makes a memorable acting debut and leads this story with defiance and dedication. There are some terrific visuals in the mix, and the writing adds in some great elements, particularly exploring the continued stigma around AIDS but it completely undercuts itself. The choices that Carla Simón makes for the latter half of the film are entirely at odds with the rest, throwing out the playbook entirely and turning it into a different experience, and unfortunately a lesser one.
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