El Sur (DVD + Blu-ray)

What is this place, this world, and where did it come from? Why am I here? Why are these my parents and not some others? What does it mean, all that I sense and see, if it means anything?Wonder and mystery dominate the child’s mind. The world exists and one is here in it, but it feels baffling, almost dreamlike.The film begins in a room at dawn. A young girl sleeps alone in her bed. Faint, diffuse light appears at the window. It gradually spreads to the bedclothes, pillow, face of the girl. It appears on walls and the floor. Darkness fades, replaced by luminosity.Details of the world, as if by magic, gradually reveal themselves: the girl, the bed, the room and other objects in it. The face of the girl — soft, gentle, angelic — seems to beautify the light.Noises from outside reach the room. A barking dog, the chatter of women’s voices. The eyes of the girl open. She listens.She is 15 but seems younger. Her name is Estrella. She’s the only child of Augustin and Julia.The year is 1957 now. The troubles of the civil war are over, but General Franco and his iron fist rule the land. The rural house the family lives in is called The Seagull, but it is far from the sea in the north. Papa (Augustin) is from the South, from Sevilla, but he’s estranged from it. What drove him away? His father, politics, disaffection, even heartbreak. He lives with the burden of exile. The north is cold and windy in winter. It snows. There are icicles and frost. The sky is grey, not blue. Andalusian oranges do not grow well here. If there is sun, it is obscured by clouds. Estrella’s bed has many blankets. The mood is cool too, if not cold. Mama (Julia) is warm, especially her heart. She is tender to her daughter. But Papa is distant, detached, icy at times. His mind seems elsewhere, his communication muted. Estrella wonders who he is and why it was he that became her father.Or she did when she was small. We see her later in flashback when she was younger, just 8 years old. We know what she thinks less by what she says and does than by her voiceover, a narration that comes years later in adulthood, the woman looking back on her girlhood.Papa is not only mysterious; he is magical. He uses a pendant on a chain to induce hypnotic states of mind in himself and Estrella. He uses a divining rod in a nearby field to help local farmers discover hidden water supplies underground. Before Estrella was born he dangled the chain and pendant over Mama’s belly and divined that the baby would be a girl. Papa is aloof and often silent, adding to mysteries that seem to cling to him.He often sits alone in the attic of the house. What does he do up there? Estrella as a child peeks through the keyhole but we don’t see what she sees. Perhaps she saw nothing, just an inert form in a chair, her father in a sort of meditation. Mama says he sits alone to gain or maintain his magic powers. Estrella looks at her uncertainly, keen to discover for herself the mysteries of her father.He shoots grouse and pheasants in the local hills for release. We sometimes hear the gun booming, a strange violence that pierces the silence of the house. It startles the accustomed calm. Violence such as this is men’s work, seldom women’s. Mama cooks, sews, tends the garden, varnishes old furniture. Her rounds are domestic. Papa is a doctor and works at the local hospital, but not every day. He goes to work via motorcycle, wearing black leathers and looking vaguely like Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones. Estrella loves the power and speed of this machine. When she hears the engine approaching she sometimes runs from the house and up the gravel road to greet Papa before he reaches home. “Give me a ride,” she says to him and he always consents. She holds on tight as the engine roars, carrying her fast along the road. “Faster,” she says to Papa and he complies, allowing her to experience the thrill a while longer.The only child has no siblings, so she must invent them. Her imagination is precious, a link to invisible worlds only she sees and knows. The adults cannot perceive the things of value to her. They have their own world and concerns. She has hers. We see her dreamily in it much of the time. It’s a cure for isolation and loneliness.Clues to the past appear, especially those concerning Papa. Why did he leave the South, and why does he never go back? Estrella has never seen it, only dreamt and pictured it: fruit and castles and the sea. The sun too. Yellows and oranges everywhere: on the land, walls, roads, women’s dresses. A different land, warm and exotic. Land of the Moors, of desert tastes and sensations. Papa is from there, grew up there, yet chooses the cold north. Postcards and picture books tell her of this land. She loves the gardens, flowers, fruit and sunlight.Travellers from the South (Grandmother and a female servant) arrive at the Seagull, her house. Grandma is Papa’s mother. Estrella is now 12, not 8 anymore. She will wear a white dress and veil for her first communion. She will look like a young bride: pure, beautiful, angelic. She does indeed, as do the other young girls that Sunday morning in the large, cold stone church with the high walls and tall ceiling, the priest’s voice echoing among them as he administers the sacraments. The girls kneel and taste the wafer, Christ’s body. The wine is also his blood to drink. The strange atavistic ritual finishes as the organ sounds. A party afterwards commences: eating, drinking, singing, dancing. Papa dances with Estrella as an accordion plays. Both smile, hold hands, twirl. Everyone is happy. Estrella’s first steps into womanhood have begun: puberty and menstruation, dancing with a man, bridal white, Christ the Redeemer guiding her forward.The event is important, which is why Grandma has travelled all the way from the South by motorcar. With her are the chauffeur and Milagros, the elderly female servant. Milagros was Papa’s nanny when he was a boy. She would have been Estrella’s nanny too if Papa had stayed and married in the South. Milagros doesn’t say so, but Estrella knows it anyway.These women from the South bring exotica with them. They speak Spanish but sound different. Estrella knows the words they use, but uses her own differently. Her dialect from the north is normal, theirs alien. But she likes the difference. Maybe, like her house, she is a seagull too. Maybe someday she will soar and see new lands as seagulls do.Who is Irene Rios? One day in a drawer in Papa’s attic desk she sees drawings Papa made of her. Her face is beautiful, her hair long. She smiles happily at him. Her name appears over and over again, written in Papa’s hand.One day Estrella asks Mama who Irene Rios is. Mama doesn’t know, asks Estrella why she asks. Estrella lies, protecting her mother from her discovery.Irene is a movie star. She sometimes appears in films, usually love stories, at the local cinema. Papa goes to see them. Estrella discovers this by accident one evening after school. She sees Papa’s motorcycle parked outside the cinema. The movie posters show Irene’s face. Her name is written in large bold letters near the photograph. So here she is, the woman Papa loves, and here he is too, inside now looking at her beautiful face on the screen.Of course it is not Irene whom he loves. He is not an infatuated schoolboy. Estrella grasps this. She is 15 now, not a child anymore. Furthermore, a local boy claims to love her and paints declarations of his love in large letters on a wall outside her house. This embarrasses her, but we sense it intrigues her as well. So, though she has no direct experience of love, she senses its power. She sees the power it has over her own father. We will not see her kiss the boy, but we know she eventually will. Papa secretly admires the boy’s boldness in expressing his love. We can read this admiration on his face.Who does Irene symbolise? Who does she remind Papa of? Estrella does not know, but it must be someone from his past, someone in the lost and forbidden land of the South. She intuits this much. Maybe Mama does too but never speaks of it, holds it inside.Papa sometimes disappears at night. Just leaves the house and says nothing. Where does he go? What does he do? He walks and leaves the motorcycle behind.A railway passes through the town. Trains come and go. It seems he might go too, but he doesn’t get on. He comes close but resists. What keeps him? Love of Estrella, duty to wife, stubbornness and pride (a pride that keeps him independent from his father)? We can’t be sure. But we are sure of one thing: he is a divided man. North and South, past and present, married man and lover. He holds the contradictions together shakily, uncertainly, but for how long?Estrella clearly loves him, but she doesn’t know what she loves. Is it the image of a father he embodies that she loves? Is it an idea or ideal? Who is this man who calls himself her father? Why is his past, just like the South, such a mystery?If Mama knows, she can’t or won’t say. As time passes we feel a growing estrangement between father and daughter. The divided man is also divided from loved ones and family, the sins of the fathers passed down to the sons, they say. It works this way with daughters too, apparently. Papa’s father is estranged from him; now Papa repeats the condition with his own child.The film is framed like a painting, or series of paintings in a gallery. The camera is still and patient. Objects, including people, are held in its gaze for long spells. We are able to look, and look closely, to see detail. This feels lifelike, real. Film that is unreal is rushed via rapid cutting, scenes abruptly shifting. We feel it as artifice. Patient, naturalistic, realistic cinema is harder to achieve. The gaze is held, but not so long or indifferently that boredom sets in. The filmmaker must also be an artist, the line thin but maintained between curiosity and boredom. Not so easy, so seldom even attempted. Only the great ones have the requisite skill. Bergman and Bresson, certainly. Dreyer and Ozu and Béla Tarr as well. The best of Truffaut and Tarkovsky, and also Bill Douglas, perhaps Scotland’s finest director. Victor Erice, the director of this film, is in this league. He is Velázquez or Vermeer, his camera a paint brush. Detail helps tell the larger story: the way light or shadows fall; the way movement and gestures make mood; the way objects in a room are shaped; the way colour, often muted, creates sensations such as touch and smell, or memories of them. The keen aesthete understands this, film and art blending as one.Words such as ‘lyricism’ and ‘poetry’ are overused in film criticism, language a poor substitute for emotion. Feelings are much older and greater than words, residing deep in consciousness, not on the surface of mind as language does. So one can’t really describe the art in this film. Better to watch, observe, sense, experience. Better to feel the hidden emotion in it. When it’s unstated or understated, as it is here, the effect is believable. It squares with something we feel, not with how the characters as actors are instructed to act to make us feel. No. Something deeper. We’re not told to feel anything. There are no cues. Therefore we are free to feel. Only the great ones, the auteurs, the authentic artists of cinema, can achieve this. Victor Erice is one of them, as this masterpiece here from him confirms.

Victor Erice is best known for his 1970s classic, Spirit of the Beehive, a richly evocative drama that features one of the best juvenile performances of all time. A much less often seen film, El Sur (The South) also turns on the limited, subjective view of a child, and the director again coaxes heart-breaking performances from the two young actresses who play the daughter of 'the man with secrets'. Erice hasn't created a huge body of work, but there's not a lazy frame in any of his films, and this quiet, elusive, exquisitely crafted story about the geography of desire generates enormous dramatic power.

One of those films that just sticks. A "small" film that takes place in very few locations, but manages to feel so much "bigger".

I acknowledge the other reviews here, but I found the film pedestrian overall. The opening sequence holds great promise (I was reminded of Cinema Paradiso) but I found it hard to empathise.

not damaged, arrived on time

Excellent

Superb, according to the film buff nephew for whom I bought it.

Great item, shipped promptly.