Recensione: Hágase tu voluntad
- Nel suo secondo lungometraggio documentario, Adrián Silvestre torna nella sua terra d'origine per ricongiungersi dopo molti anni di assenza al padre, che desidera una morte rapida e dignitosa
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Adrián Silvestre made his fiction debut in 2016 with The Objects of Love [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film] and returned to this domain once again two years ago with My Emptiness and I [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Adrián Silvestre
scheda film]. In between, he premiered the documentary Sediments [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Adrián Silvestre
scheda film] (2021), and he has now made another work in this same format in the guise of May Your Will Be Done [+leggi anche:
intervista: Adrián Silvestre
scheda film], a film starring him and his own family. The movie took part in the Thessaloniki Film Festival and DocsBarcelona, and is landing in Spanish cinemas on Friday 6 September with DocsBarcelona Distribución.
The film shows how Adrián Silvestre braces himself for a peculiar reunion with his father, after spending too long without seeing or communicating with him. Said dad, Ricardo, is a hedonistic and somewhat sarcastic bon vivant, whose life is unravelling after he recently lost his partner and suffered two strokes. His physical decline and the irremediable situation of solitude that he finds himself in suck him into a state of depression and anxiety, which, in his eyes, will only come to an end with his own death.
And so, in order to bid farewell to his dad, Silvestre returns from Barcelona, where he currently lives, to Valencia, the place where he was born. There, with the help of his sister and his mother, he will steel himself for the reunion with Ricardo. Over the course of the next few days, there will be get-togethers, nights out, excursions, many conversations (and arguments) and the odd celebration, where we will witness emotional relationships that the audience will easily be able to identify with.
This is because, beginning from the most intimate and personal starting point, Silvestre – with brush strokes of humour, tenderness, fantasy and emotion – gradually breaks down universal themes such as forgiveness, the right to a dignified death, jealousy, irreconcilable differences, the ability to say goodbye, estrangement (whether avoidable or not) and the effects that reunions have on a person and their surroundings.
In addition, thanks to an entertaining and very clever meta-cinematographic game that emerges in the second half of the film, the details of which we will not spoil here, the fondness that the protagonists have for one another begins to blossom once again, without the movie ever falling into the trap of sappiness or melodrama. Even the highly sensitive and timely topic of euthanasia is broached with the utmost respect and understanding. What’s more, the character of Ricardo – who is actually fairly modern and sensitive beneath his façade as a hardened, stubborn old man – manages, despite his (entirely human) flaws, to dazzle us with his mixture of pig-headedness, romanticism and tolerance of diversity.
May Your Will Be Done was produced by Producciones del Barrio, Nanouk Films and Atresmedia Cine. It won the Docs Jury Award - Antaviana at DocsBarcelona, following its international premiere at Thessaloniki. The movie is kicking off the 20th season of Docs del Mes (an initiative run by DeAPlaneta), DocsBarcelona’s programming circuit, which brings the best non-fiction releases to more than 70 theatres across Spain every month of the year, from September to June.
(Tradotto dallo spagnolo)
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