UN AMOR (San Sebastián IFF 2023) – Review by Jennifer Green
Un Amor, director Isabel Coixet’s latest drama playing in competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival 2023 and based on a best-selling novel by Sara Mesa, is a nuanced and emotional film driven by a powerful lead performance from Spanish star Laia Costa. The film is getting a lot of attention for its portrayal of female sexuality, but its themes go much deeper.
Un Amor opens on an African woman quietly recounting horrors of violence she experienced in her home and village. To the side, a Spanish woman translates her words in a noticeable monotone. The grainy, documentary-style filming gives the sense this is a video recorded for bureaucratic rather than aesthetic purposes. Later, we get tidbits of information – where the woman is from, why she’s recording her story, how the violence against one woman reverberates to the next, and the moral quandaries the monotone translation doesn’t reveal.
The video is pre-recorded; since then, the Spanish woman, Nat (Costa), has quit her emotionally draining translating job and moved to a rundown old house in a rural village. She is a bundle of vulnerable nerves. The film’s introduction masterfully evokes that stress. The house is falling apart. Her landlord (Luis Bermejo) is a coarse and intimidating presence who bullies her from the start then leaves her with a badly scarred, clearly abused dog. Everyone knows everyone else’s business in this isolated town.
Meanwhile, the area’s natural surroundings feel threatening in their own way – Coixet and cinematographer Bet Rourich capture towering rock formations from high above and down below, and the parched countryside feels like it’s somehow encroaching. Village life is anything but bucolic here, a theme seen in other Spanish films, most recently Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s 2022 award-winning The Beasts (As Bestas).
The men are a lot like the vultures circling above the natural rock formations. They represent different types who might make their way to a remote village – the artisan, the yuppy family man taking breaks from the city, the gruff locals. Some have a bestial air and a Darwinian view of the rules of the natural world. They all circle newcomer Nat. Handyman Andreas (pro boxer turned actor Hovik Keuchkerian), known to villagers as “the German,” offers to do some needed repairs on Nat’s house in exchange for a little time “inside” her. She befriends stained glass designer Piter (played against type by handsome star Hugo Silva) but rebuffs his pushy advances; likewise, the meaningful stares of married neighbor Carlos (Francesco Carril).
What’s unclear at first is what Nat is doing there, or why she appears so fragile. We only get details as the two-hour film advances and she makes decisions that would seem to go entirely against type, or at least viewer expectations. When Nat starts to unravel, the film’s themes emerge. From the victims of gender violence in Africa, to Nat on the verge of a breakdown, to the skittish dog she’s caring for, to Andreas’ Armenian refugee mom, women are survivors.
Coixet has gathered an all-female writing, producing, directing and cinematography team for Un Amor. Based in Barcelona, she is a prolific, international filmmaker who often adapts books and female-driven stories and consistently handles tales of love, identity and sex naturally.
She is at her best when she lets her characters behave like real people (see 2017’s The Bookshop, 2014’s Learning to Drive or her 2019 HBO Europe series Foodie Love, also starring Costa), rather than forcing messages onto dialogues like this one from Un Amor: “A lot of nuns smoke and a lot of whores pray.” “Amen.” In a couple of montages, Costa has out-of-body type experiences. When she is seen, for example, transfixed by her own reflection in a dark window, these feel organic. But when she appears to more literally watch herself in action, it comes across as artificial.
Without wanting to give too much away, the final sequence of Un Amor – set to a memorable German tune whose lyrics talk about pain going away and things turning out okay – is surprisingly poignant and full of symbolic meaning.
