email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

SEVILLE 2017 Resistencias

Review: The Wild Season

by 

- Newcomer Anxos Fazáns directs a small, delicate and intimate adaptation of a novel about three young people and the (intimate) spaces between them

Review: The Wild Season
Nerea Barros, Alberto Rolán and Xosé Barato in The Wild Season

Two men, one woman, time and space. These five seemingly simple, but deeply complex elements make up the constellation around which The Wild Season [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
orbits, the debut feature by Pontevedra-born director Anxos Fazant. The film is a free adaptation of journalist Manuel Jabois' novel, presented in the Resistencias section at the 14th Seville European Cinema Festival, bringing to the big screen the lacerated intimacy and mild and unbearable everyday lives of the three characters.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Manoel (Alberto Rolán) is a young writer who combines his attempts to start writing again with his collaboration on a literature broadcast for a local radio station. His melancholy weighs down on his gestures, movements, and relationships with those around him. On the other hand are two old friends, of a more lively and cheerful age: David (Xosé Barato), more dynamic and carefree, seeking to get the best out of life, and Claudia (Nerea Barros, winner of a Goya for Best Actress in the Marshland [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alberto Rodríguez
film profile
]
), energetic and spiritual, but visibly wounded, trying to let herself forget the thing that wiped away her identity.

Manoel, David and Claudia meet up, remembering their past lives and trying to find a way to escape. From the cobbled streets of Santiago de Compostela, where Manoel spends his time between a messy apartment and the night, the domain of his faithful drug dealer (Antonio Durán "Morris"), to the sunny coast of the Rías Baixas, where the three characters (plus David's sister) decide to live together for the summer, the story is focused on the bodies of the trio. Manoel and David's bodies attempt to protect Claudia's, who must cope with the problems that her addiction to drugs have caused. The nakedness of the three, often shown on screen, fits in both with the vulnerability of the characters and a plot guided by the most intimate and basic feelings.

In the space that extends between the skin of Manoel, David and Claudia, The Wild Season takes place as an exercise in physical cinema, supported by the decision to shoot on physical film, which gives the image an almost tangible grain, and the importance of live music, which highlights Galicia’s vibrant and young alternative scene.

The young debut director, Fazáns (only 25 years old), who also wrote the script with Ángel Santos (director of The High Pressures [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ángel Santos
film profile
]
) Daniel Froiz and Xacobe Casas, portrays, with studied delicacy, these fragile characters, teetering on the edge of an abyss.

The film was produced by Matriuska Producciones.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy