A Film a Week - Rita

 previously published on Cineuropa

The greatest thing that Spanish actress-turned-filmmaker Paz Vega has done with her directorial debut, Rita, is that she convinces the audience that they are watching one movie until the very end, when it turns into something quite different. Rita has just premiered on Locarno’s Piazza Grande. Given the star power of Vega, here fulfilling a four-fold role (that of writer, helmer, actress in a prominent part and executive producer), and the urgency of its topic, it could gain some more festival exposure, a theatrical release in the Spanish-speaking world, and then end up on television worldwide.

The titular protagonist is a seven-year-old girl (played by magnetic newcomer Sofía Allepuz) who lives in Seville with her family, consisting of the taxi-driver father José Manuel (Roberto Álamo, glimpsed in supporting roles in numerous Spanish films), homemaker mother Mari (the filmmaker herself) and younger brother Lolo (Alejandro Escamilla). The year is 1984, it’s late spring, and the Spanish national football team is doing well in the European Championship tournament, which seems to be the father’s main preoccupation.

In the meantime, Rita spends most of her time playing with her brother or with her neighbour of the same age, Nito (Daniel Navarro), or being taken care of by her mother or by their neighbour Chari (Paz de Alarcón) when the mother has to run errands or visit the ailing grandmother. As we watch the events unfold from her sensitive, yet playful, perspective, we observe certain things: her dad’s quick temper and negative attitude towards the world, but especially towards the mother; her mum's initially silent, but later more vocal, despair; and her brother’s fear and panic attacks whenever the parents argue. All of this leads to the notion that home is not necessarily a safe place (especially for her mother) and that Rita’s growing up is no fairy tale.

Allepuz is a perfect choice for the role of Rita because of her natural energy that easily transforms into an organic chemistry with her acting partners, both the children and the adults. Álamo does a great job of hiding José Manuel’s menace behind a façade of the typical blue-collar blues, while Vega offers a master class in playing Mari’s sadness – that of a woman unable to do a single thing about her misfortune.

Apart from her acting talent, which we have also witnessed in more than 70 previous roles, in Rita, Vega also demonstrates a knack for storytelling, both as a writer and as a director. Her script is cleverly written and masterfully controlled by her directing, with a good sense of visual narration. She uses simple tricks such as the levitating camera movements in Eva Díaz Iglesias’s cinematography and an abundant use of lower angles to mimic the perspective of a child. The editing by Ana Álvarez-Ossorio keeps the pace at a moderate level, while the score on piano with some orchestration by Pablo Cervantes further accentuates the dreaminess and the gentleness associated with a carefree childhood.

The end result is something akin to a collection of detailed, yet diffuse, memories constructed around a series of events that the child protagonist could only see as low-intensity ones. However, darker tones are always subtly hinted at, and gradually introduced and amplified. By the end of the film, those innuendos converge into a striking, harrowing picture of abuse, making Rita an unpleasant, yet necessary, wake-up call.