Cata (Zoe Stein) and Eva (Martina García) are only supposed to stay at their grandparents’ seaside home in Mallorca for a week in “Forastera,” during which time their grandmother Catalina suspects their biggest issue will be their grandfather Tomeu (Lluís Homar) will ask them repeatedly about the fresh coat of paint he’s applied to the railing on the deck. Catalina can get on the teenage girls’ nerves slightly as well when she insists Cata ought to take driving lessons with Tomeu, though she doesn’t see the need with all the public transport that’s available to her back in Madrid, and there isn’t a lot to do around the house but watch their grandparents lounge about, deeply in love after all these years but for all their passion, there’s little excitement. In Lucía Aleñar Iglesias’ touching coming-of-age story, Cata and Eva can only yearn for that kind of uneventful summer after Catalina suddenly passes away, leaving a gap that the older Cata feels she has to take it upon herself to fill.
There’s a gentility in Iglesias’ debut that belies the burden that Cata takes on, with the young woman almost surprising herself with how readily she accepts the role of holding her family together from the moment she calmly discovers Catalina’s body lying on the ground late one night, but finding from Tomeu’s abrupt breakdown that the equation has suddenly reversed when it comes to the adults in her life, who all suddenly look quite mortal. She had her suspicions even before her grandmother’s death when she acts as something of a mediator between Tomeu and her mother Pepa (Núria Prims), who declines to talk to her father on one of her calls from afar when Cata offers the opportunity. When tragedy occurs, the teen can’t possibly know what everyone needs, but she quickly realizes she’s the only one who can extend a helping hand between the strained relationship between Tomeu and Pepa and the fact that Pepa isn’t around for Eva, who is shaken by the death, though eventually their mother comes to help arrange the funeral.
A great moment in the film arrives when Cata is putting on a dress that Catalina once wore as Pepa and Eva are sifting through the things they’ll have to discard, and while strikingly emblematic of the role Cata has started to inhabit, seeing an activity where the women in the family are connected for once is both warm and bittersweet when they’re ultimately saying goodbye, a feeling that runs throughout “Forestera” where emotions can seem too complicated to immediately make sense of and achieving any peace drives Cata. She is played with considerable poise by Stein and Iglesias gives the space to process with airy compositions and a refreshingly minimal amount of score, though the filmmaker may be a little overaggressive in one respect when the film starts to hint that Cata could actually be Catalina incarnate, a potent reflection of the character being subsumed by the obligation she’s faced with and the dangers of being overwhelmed by it, but at odds with the generally delicate tone of the film. However, as far as unforgettable formative summers on screen go, “Forastera” is particularly memorable in chronicling someone at risk of growing up too fast by having too much of a sense of responsibility rather than learning from not having enough of it.
“Forastera” will screen again at the Toronto Film Festival on September 9th at the Scotiabank at 9:15 pm.