David O'ConnellCamino
June 1st 2010 05:45
Where do you start with Javier Fesser’s Camino (2008), a film “inspired by true events”? By turns sensationalist, trivial, and deeply moving, it's open to a variety of equally valid interpretations. Is it a caustic indictment of organized religion? Or a tragic fable infused with magical realism? Or maybe just a disturbing depiction of parental manipulation gone mad?
Wobbling in and out of its narrative borders like a drunken sailor, the film details the last months of Camino Fernandez (Nerea Camacho), a young Spanish fifth-grader from Madrid whose sudden bouts of neck pain lead to the diagnosis of a tumour that soon mutates into a rare cancer. Her family is a devoutly religious one. Looming largest here is mother Gloria (Carme Elias), a seemingly sweet, loving woman superficially, but who may be harboring ulterior motives that are not exactly conducive to restoring her daughter’s health.
Camino’s father Jose (Mariano Venancio) is a caring, almost perfect, paternal figure, and a source of great comfort for her, but a man with a fatal flaw: he’s weak-willed, having seemingly forever bowed down to his wife’s wishes. This translates into little more than scant hollow words of advice and encouragement for Camino as her condition deteriorates, tangling her own faith in confusion as she tries to assimilate God’s motives with the ailment afflicting her failing body.
Camino has an older sister, Nuria (Manuela Velles), who she rarely sees. The circumstances of Nuria’s strange life are only partially explained but it seems she left home at 18 to live in a home with numerous young people of her age. They are now effectually sequestered as “numeraries” in a regimented Pamplona household ruled by a branch of the Opus Dei sect of the Catholic Church.
Camino is a deeply unsettling film at times. A revelatory flashback is central to how audience allegiances will ultimately be swayed in one direction: Camino re-lives, through a dream, an episode from her childhood is which she awoke to find her mother cradling her dead baby brother, Gloria responding with a beatific smile that the child wanted to return home to Jesus. It’s a strikingly creepy moment, creating a lasting impression of a fervent religious devotion that borders on insanity.
What is most riling is the odious insistence of Camino’s mother that her illness is occurring because God loves her. When confronted with the debilitating strain her family has been placed under she returns serve with her steadfast proclamation of wishing to “thank Him every day for her daughter’s illness”, hoping eventually for an unlikely canonization, the ultimate reinforcement of her reverence and unwavering piousness. Almost as infuriating is Jose's failure to react and prevent Gloria's poisonous cloak of Godly justification from engulfing them all.
Moments of magical realism are often potently contrasted with the harmful levels of subtle constriction established by Gloria in her rule over the family. Camino’s dreams are often frightening, sometimes shedding distressing light on her present and past lives, but they can be freeing too, such as when a playful mouse - the one her mother forlornly attempts to snare in their pantry - and Mr. Meebles, a wise old sage from a secondhand book, enter the fray of her wild imagination.
Where Fesser’s visually polished film fails is in its handling of the wildly overlapping tones. Never settling into a consistent rhythm, Camino veers from trepidation to whimsy, and from austerity to absurdity at a second’s notice. The overall effect detracts from any cohesive, rational sense Fesser is aiming for in his re-imagining of this girl’s tragic final months of life.
This is especially true during the protracted final stage as Camino's final throes are intrinsically linked - almost supernaturally - to a school drama club's performance of Cinderella which she dreamed of being a part of. The ecclesiastical music is over-reaching to the point where you suspect the line between valid support and mockery is being breached.
The experience of watching Camino for all of its 140 minutes is likely to induce exultant joy and a smattering of teary moments. But what lingers most is the anger at the controversial means of propagating God’s divine will that Camino’s mother uses to enact some form of spiritual sanctification for her daughter in preference to saving her from maximum harm.
This is ultimately a compelling, and on some levels, daring film. It's an emotionally-charged one too, loaded with both wondrous and disturbing imagery. Forced into a final judgement, I’d have to classify it as a failure however, but there’s no disputing that it’s an intriguing, fascinating one, sure to provoke vigorous debate.
Camino has just been released on DVD by Madman Entertainment.
| 168 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by David O'Connell
20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic
Madman are brilliant aren't they?
Comment by Matt Shea
Comment by David O'Connell
20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
Comment by David O'Connell
20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Just watched it....