Tags archives: Laia Artigas
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6 years ago
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In Summer 1993, the lovely and evocative feature film debut by Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón, a six-year-old girl slowly comes to terms with grief and a new way of life. The film's straightforward observational style conveys complex emotions without veering into sentimentality, while the orphaned Frida (played with gravity and charisma by Laia Artigas) is not portrayed as pathetic, but realistically moody, alternating between mischievous and melancholy.
The autobiographical story (Simón lost her own parents when she was a child) begins with a busy scene of adults packing boxes around the small, watchful figure of Frida, who is being sent from her grandparents’ Barcelona home to live with her aunt and uncle in the countryside.
We discover this rustic new home along with Frida, as the camera trails her explorations around the sprawling property where crowing roosters, aggressive hens and farm life in general all seem very foreign. Esteve (David Verdaguer), the brother of Frida’s recently deceased mother, and his wife Marga (Bruna Cusi) are young and fairly laid-back, but also kind and attentive. Frida immediately befriends their daughter Anna (Paula Robles), introducing her little cousin to various toys with the standard, older-kid “hands off” proviso.
The film's overall tone is low-key and intimate, with many close-ups of Frida’s small, pensive face. She expresses her sense of displacement in small acts of rebellion and leads the ever-willing Anna through var[...]
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