‘This Solitude’ San Sebastian Review: Javier Giner’s Wrenching Debut Follows Two Exes Rebuilding Their Lives
Two exes rebuild their lives in parallel near Bilbao: an actor cares for his ailing father, a writer meets a prison inmate. Screening in the New Directors section.
Premiering in San Sebastián’s parallel New Directors section, Esta soledad could easily have landed in the official competition, where it would have stood well above many of the Spanish films vying for prizes there. It’s the debut feature from Javier Giner, whom we already know as co-creator of the autobiographical series Yo, Adicto. But perhaps because it’s a first film, and to avoid saddling it with heavy expectations, the festival chose this more secluded slot, where it can play as a discovery. That, in large part, is exactly what this deep and at times shattering drama turns out to be.
In a way, you get two films for the price of one. This Solitude tells two stories that unfold in parallel on the outskirts of Bilbao and barely touch each other. What they share is central: the protagonists of each were a couple for five years, and now, separated, they are entering a stage of life in which they have to reconfigure their existence, each in their own way and, in both cases, with more trouble, conflict and hardship than anything else.
Oriol Pla, the lead of Yo, Adicto, reunites with Giner for a character who shares a similar intensity with that earlier role. In the particulars, though, the two couldn’t be more different. Pla plays Leo, a fringe-theater actor who specializes in clowning techniques. He works in small venues, and here we see him performing a raw, physical and apparently autobiographical monologue, and he also teaches classes. To survive, though, he has to work as a supermarket cashier, a job he hates. The hardest part is dealing with his father’s severe illness: the older man can’t fend for himself, and Leo has to help him with every aspect of his life.
She is Lorea (Marina Salas), who shares with Leo that mix of fierceness and intensity. A writer with a published autobiographical book, she works as a waitress in a bar. Lorea fights with her mother more than anything else; her mother still lives with her father even though, in practice, they are separated. During a visit to a women’s prison, where she goes to present her book, Lorea meets Irati (Gemma Martínez), an inmate. The relationship that develops between them becomes transformative in more ways than one, as Lorea begins drawing on Irati’s experience to write her next novel.
Amid the pain of a breakup that never quite seems to fade, both characters live out their parallel lives and watch them get more complicated. Leo’s father’s health declines, and with it come some family surprises. For Lorea, Irati’s release from prison means a recalibration between expectations and reality, between literature and life. What ties their experiences together, beyond the fact that they were once a couple, is an apparent inability to express what is happening to them in real life, leaving it instead for their artistic outlets.
The crossings between the two stories are more metaphorical than realistic. In short, these are two parallel tales of personal, emotional and above all familial reconstruction, centered on thirtysomethings who struggle to find their footing in the world after that painful split. Betting on a dry, direct urban realism, a trait shared with his series and with much of young Spanish and European cinema, Giner threads together two stories of survival in a world that hands his characters more obstacles than anything else, and where the future most often looks pretty dark. Despite the wrenching dryness that runs through This Solitude at times, Giner always leaves open the possibility that there’s a bit more light at the end of the road.
