19/11/2024 - In Aitor Echeverría’s elegant feature debut, Emma Suárez and Natalia de Molina play a mother and daughter who need each other and repel one another in equal measure

Darío Grandinetti, Emma Suárez and Natalia de Molina in Dismantling an Elephant

Family and all its complexities, including dependency and sacrificing one’s life for the care of others, were at the heart of the feature debut by Nely Reguera, María (and Everybody Else) [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nely Reguera
film profile]; in her second effort, The Volunteer [+see also:
film review
film profile], the topic of caring for other people was once again at the centre of the plot. In both works, the filmmaker called upon the services of Aitor Echeverría as DoP. Now, the Barcelona native has made his directorial debut with Dismantling an Elephant [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which competed for the Golden Giraldillo of the 21st Seville European Film Festival and won the AC/E Award for Best Director of a Spanish Film. In it, he tackles similar conflicts revolving around the family and dependency.

In this feature debut, Natalia de Molina plays Blanca, the youngest daughter of a couple played by Darío Grandinetti and Emma Suárez. Her character, Marga, is a respected architect who, with years of alcohol addiction behind her, comes home after spending two months in a detoxification centre following a domestic accident. Now, the thing that had previously been hushed up – and accepted in toxic fashion – can no longer be kept hidden, because it has become too weighty to remain up in the rafters. The truth has come out and is now on the (Perspex) table. The elephant that had been taking up a good portion of the room is finally there for all to see, and if it’s not dismantled, it could cause even more damage.

Peppered with beautiful dance scenes (Echeverría previously also made various dance-film works), Dismantling an Elephant tackles the problems stemming from a lack of communication in the household, when a conflict that everybody knows about inexplicably becomes an unspeakable taboo. Why do family dynamics sometimes hinge on a mystery that has become an open secret? Why does the home, which should be a haven of trust and affection, get corrupted and veer towards dependencies and acts of concealment that break up the harmonious flow of the relationships between family members? For how long can a situation this absurd, but also normalised, be maintained?

All of these questions are presented on screen by the director (who co-wrote the screenplay together with Pep Garrido), who has opted for a cold, collected, elegant and distant form of mise-en-scène that dictates the pace of the action, which takes place chiefly within an imposing, glazed house that is almost on a par with the one in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. The movie leans heavily on the acting work of its two female leads (the five Goya Awards they have won between them are a testament to their credibility, sensitivity and talent) and on a narrative structure fuelled by ellipses that the viewer must fill in with his or her own experiences in the family milieu… And we all have more than enough of those, after all.

Dismantling an Elephant is a film staged by Arcadia Motion Pictures (Spain) in association with Pegaso Pictures AIE and Noodles Production (France). Its international sales are handled by Filmax.

(Translated from Spanish)