‘Dolores’ San Sebastian Review: A Family Drama in Three Generations

Marcelo Gomes is one of the most celebrated Brazilian filmmakers of the past few decades, known for films like Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures, Once Upon a Time Veronica, and Joaquim, among others. One of his curious—and fruitful—habits is to co-direct several of his projects. He’s done so with Karim Aïnouz (I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You), Cao Guimarães (The Man of the Crowd), and here he follows the same path with Maria Clara Escobar, director of The Days with Him and Desterro. In most of these collaborations, Gomes tends to adapt himself to the style of the director he teams up with. That was true with Aïnouz and Guimarães, and it might happen again in this family drama.

Dolores tells the story of three generations of women from the same family: a grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughter. Dolores (Carla Ribas) herself is the eldest, a warm, smiling 65-year-old with both a dream and a problem. She longs to open her own casino—a bingo hall with musical shows—but she’s also fond of gambling, whether it’s bingo or slot machines. Needless to say, that’s not the most professional background for someone entering the business. With that dream in mind, she’s even considering selling her apartment.

Her daughter, Deborah (Naruna Costa), in her forties, has a strained relationship with her mother. Part of it stems from the planned sale, though other reasons emerge later. She also has a partner about to be released from prison (Deborah herself makes a living selling lingerie to women visiting inmates), but when that long-awaited reunion finally arrives, things don’t go as she had hoped. And then there’s Duda (Ariane Aparecida), twenty years old, close to both her mother and especially her grandmother, but with a very different obsession: she’s passionate about firearms. Duda spends her time at shooting ranges and dreams of moving to the United States, where gun ownership is less restricted.

Over a brisk 83 minutes, the film weaves together their stories—mostly separate, sometimes intersecting. What gives Dolores its distinctive flavor is the cinematography, which heightens the slightly uncanny tone of a narrative that oscillates between reality and fantasy. At times it feels like a classic urban drama; at others, thanks to musical interludes in the places Dolores frequents, it drifts into a dreamlike state.

So much so that it’s not always clear what’s real and what’s imagined, especially when it comes to Dolores, who seems more detached from reality than the others and yearns for a better relationship with her daughter. One dream unites them: the idea of leaving the country. Paraguay looms as a possible destination—mainly because of the gambling—but the feasibility of that plan remains uncertain. Perhaps it belongs more to the realm of desire than to any tangible possibility.

The story is based on a script by Chico Teixeira, director of Alice’s House and Absence, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 61. Dolores forms a kind of trilogy with those films, adding another thematic “collaboration” to Gomes’s career. Its surface may feel light and pleasant at times, with musical detours and seemingly carefree moments, but beneath that gentleness lies a harsher, more complicated drama—one about various forms of addiction and the rough edges of family ties in a structure where the men are either a burden or simply absent. For these three generations of women, the only possible way forward may lie in resilience—or in imagination.