THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
The Spanish director Chema Garcia Ibarra, born in 1980, likes to shoot his films in his hometown of Elche, with non-professional actors, wrapping his fictions in a “documentary mist”, according to his expression. Elche, an industrial town located in the province of Alicante, specialized in the manufacture of shoes, has a small community of ufologists watching for the arrival of flying saucers at night.
Inspired by this local reality, the first feature film by Chema Garcia Ibarra, The Holy Spirit, special mention from the Locarno jury in 2021, weaves a minimalist fiction where the daily life of a group of somewhat enlightened inhabitants and a strange investigation around the disappearance of a little girl intertwine. This genre film mixed with anthropology, in a vein close – although smoother – to Virgil Vernier (Mercurialsin 2014, Sophia Antipolis, in 2018…), manages to take us into his web without special effects, thanks to a patient work of study of the territory and the characters.
José Manuel (Nacho Fernandez), a silent young man with the false air of Sergi Lopez, never misses his appointments with Julio (José Angel Asensio), boss of a real estate agency who cultivates a passion for parallel worlds. The small band of friends has its rituals and forms like a second family. José is, moreover, the uncle of Veronica (Llum Arques). Traumatized since the disappearance of her twin sister, the little one lives with her single mother.
Unquiet Cinema
Two events will shake the microcosm: the sudden death of Julio, which is a cataclysm for José and his friends; at the same time, Veronica’s mother must accompany the police to Turkey, on the trail of a possible kidnapping, and the child is entrusted to her uncle.
Chema Garcia Ibarra never makes fun of his characters, in a documentary genre tinged with the supernatural
The character of the little girl, almost mute, and her missing double (offscreen), creates a certain uneasiness. Here she is embarked in the universe of beliefs of her uncle José, to which the little one seems rather permeable. Veronica also discovers her maternal grandmother, whom she never knew, her mother having broken with the old lady, clairvoyant by profession, who never supported the arrival of the twins. Now suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, she lives cloistered in her living room with leopard curtains, watching new age shows.
Chema Garcia Ibarra never makes fun of his characters, his camera not standing above, but at their side, without bias, in a documentary genre tinged with the supernatural. This restless cinema with a calibrated scenario – sometimes a little too much – deploys drop by drop a black humor which is reminiscent of the first films of Dominik Moll: José, an uncle who wishes you well?
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