Summer 1993
SUMMER 1993, drama, not rated, in Spanish with subtitles, Center for Contemporary Arts, 3 chiles
Carla Simón’s debut feature is an autobiographical drama that deals with abandonment emotions like pain, loss, bewilderment, and anger. When Frida (Laia Artigas) is orphaned at the age of six, she’s at the mercy of the tides of the adult world. Fortunately in her case, those tides are benevolent — she’s sent to live with her mother’s brother Esteve (David Verdaguer), his wife Marga (Bruna Cusí), and their four-year-old daughter Anna (Paula Robles).
Her new family embraces Frida with open arms, but open arms aren’t enough to dissipate the shock of her loss. Ripped away from everything that’s been her life — parents, friends, an apartment in Barcelona — and transported to a house in the country and a new family, Frida takes it all in and processes it as best she can.
Her mother, we learn, has died of AIDS-related pneumonia, perhaps contracted through drug use. There’s less information about the fate of the father, but it probably took a similar turn. Nobody holds this against Frida, but the panic of a mother in a playground when Frida bleeds from a scraped knee makes her, and us, aware of the social stigma she’s inherited.
Simón frames many of the early scenes either from Frida’s point of view or with close-ups of the little girl’s face. This approach emphasizes her subjective awareness, but also wears a little thin on the viewer. As she adjusts to her new life — or tries to — issues arise, and Frida sometimes sullenly acts out despite the patient kindness she gets from her new family. Her truculence and resentment build a level of suspense and even dread as we wonder just how far her moods will take her.
One of the film’s most intriguing devices is Frida’s relationship to her little cousin Anna. Anna’s presence gives Frida the double perspective of being a big kid who finds herself looked up to and idolized by the younger girl, even as she’s trying to navigate her way through the incomprehensible world of the grown-ups.
As much as anything, Simón’s film memoir is a tribute to Marga, the substitute mother who weathers a few storms of nasty and even dangerous behavior from her little niece with understanding, patience, and love. None of this could hold together as well as it does without the captivating performance of little Laia Artigas, as she looks out at a world turned upside-down and tries to find her place in it. — Jonathan Richards