Leave No Trace

seen on 25 August 2018

Debra Cranik directs Thomsain Harcourt McKenzie as Tom and Ben Foster as her father Will in this adaptation of Peter Rock's book My Abandonment.


Tom and Will live on the margins - actually, at the opening of the film, they are camping in a remote public park, following a routine that is evidently both familiar and comprehensive in protecting their privacy. When Tom is inadvertantly seen by a ranger they areapprehended and placed under the care of social services, being given the use of a small house by a local logger. However, Will is unwilling to accept such interventions in his life; the reasons for his reluctance are unstated but fairly obviously due to PTSD. When Will insists on leaving, travelling north to the colder Washington State by bus and hitchhiking, Tom is staunchly loyal until the real fragility of their lifestyle is made plain when Will has a crippling accident in the forest. The final scenes show her making her own way as her father concedes her right to decide for herself.


This bald summary hardly does justice to the quiet authority of the film; the rituals of their lives are closely observed; the tensions between father and daughter merely the surface disruptions of a deep and almost always unstated love and trust; the well-meaning people they meet understandably concerned that there may be a dark side to the situation, but accepting Tom's assurances that nothig is untoward. It is a measured and beautiful revelation of a lifestyle in the United States that is totally at odds with the usual filmic depictions of family life (dysfunctional or otherwise). The two central performances are unfussy, with huge amounts of communication transmitted by quick glances, small twitches of the lips or cheeks, a code-like clucking, which achieve an enormous resonance as the film proceeds. By the end, when Will lets Tom return to the backwoods trailer-park community that she finds so congenial, almost nothing needs to be said in a parting that isboth heartrending and affirmative.


It's a great film.

Summer 1993 (Estiu 1993)

seen on 12 August 2018

Carla Simon directs Laia Artigas as Frida, Paula Roblas as her cousin Anna, and David Verdaguer and Bruna Cusi as Anna's parents Esteve and Marge in a film about six-year-old Frida's adjustment to living in the country near Girona after her mother has died of AIDS in Barcelona. Frida's grandparents and aunts, living in Barcelona, can no longer care for her and so she goes with her mother's brother to live with him, his wife and little daughter.