THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
Each film by Jaime Rosales is a visual, plastic experience, hollowing out the story to capture only the essential. We remember the white light of Dream and silence (2012), and this stealthy shot, parasitized, on the asphalt of a road, recounting the fatal accident. Or again of this wandering camera, sweeping the space between a mother and her daughter, as if to measure the depth of the conflict (The Beautiful Youth2014).
In Wild Sunflowersthe Spanish filmmaker, born in 1970, is inspired by the photo novel to capture, in three paintings (and three men), the love life of a young Barcelonan, Julia (Anna Castillo), a young mother who is both sexy and inseparable from her two little ones – in her freedom, the actress is reminiscent of Penélope Cruz in her early days, in Ham, ham (1992), by Bigas Luna.
In the male trio, there is first Oscar (Oriol Pla, brilliantly nervous), a seductive macho whom Julia adores, until the day he turns violent and hits her. The heroine then finds the father of her children, Marcos (Quim Avila), a soldier who, deep down, does not want a family life. Finally, she falls on an old acquaintance, Alex (Lluis Marquès), already a father too, with whom she tries the adventure.
Oscar, Marcos, Alex: each chapter bears the first name of a lover (in large letters invading the screen), thereby announcing the case study. Already released in Spain, a country which is experiencing a masculinist backlash, conveyed in particular by the far-right Vox party, Wild Sunflowers created the debate while enjoying a certain success in theaters.
An elliptical narrative
Let’s sum up: a woman suffers setbacks, falls, gets up, fails again, but does not despair of finding a soul mate, like a good little soldier of love. The story is not a priori at the forefront of radicalism, but Jaime Rosales’ approach turns out to be more singular if we consider the scenario differently: mirroring the portrait of Julia, the director sketches profiles of inglorious men, thus designating the straight couple as a category with an uncertain future.
Seen from this angle, Wild Sunflowers appears as a prototype film exploring the vacillation of the traditional “one man and one woman” narrative. Through an elliptical story, the director tries to answer questions that torment him, as he confided to us during a meeting: do women still want to live with men? And under what conditions? Why does Julia, an independent young woman, need a companion?
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