Pretty Arantxa (Leire Ucha) is looking forward to marrying her fiance Iñaki (Eriz Alberdi) in a month's time. Her mother (Pilar Rodríguez) hints to Arantxa's older-by-14-years brother, 40-or-so Ander (Joxean Bengoetxea), that it's about time he got married as well. They know differently, of course. Ander is gay, not openly. On the contrary, he regularly joins his boozing, coke-snorting farmer mate Peio, who lives up the lane, for sex with prostitute Reme (Mamen Rivera). It takes the arrival of hired labourer José (Christian Esquivel) to bring things out into the open.

It's August 1999. Ander, his sister and mother live on a farm outside a small town in Northern Spain. Their father is dead and Ander works the farm, with a supplementary job operating machinery in a bicycle factory. He's a contemplative man, and likes to spend his time listening to local music station Jazz Radio. There's a sense that their father Andrés was a tyrant; Ander certainly resents him. Mother stands for what is right, and is a severe presence, keeping everything in order and Ander copiously and continually fed. He's tubby, unsuprisingly given the enormous amount of food consumed. Baguettes are delivered daily by van. Mother lays out a spread of cut cured meat, cheese, coffee, jams, bread for breakfast; big filled baguette - a slab - for lunch at the factory, plus wine (no health and safety regulations here); or big bowl of stew and vegetables plus bread and wine if at home; big baguette snack if working on the farm; continual offers of omelettes - the Spanish ones which can be eaten hot or cold including vegetables. Then there's dinner. One way or another Ander's taking in four or five thousand calories a day. To be fair, he veers towards the slob-like. Selfish, boorish, porky, inconsiderate. A hard worker, keeping the farm going, but not a man of grace.

Older man Evaristo (Pedro Otaegi) arrives for dinner, to the suspicion of brother and sister. They wonder if he's after their mother, same age, and was dad's best friend. Ander sits at the head of the table, appointed by his mother as the family head. He angrily cuts Evaristo short - 'Don't you ever call me that, please', followed by an awkward silence - for calling him Andrés, his father's name, and turns up the TV across the dinner table, which rudely prevents conversation.

The countryside is huge and pretty and views show no people or houses - it's nature. Cows have clunking bells, there are pigs, and hard but not slavish work. Ander's life isn't dominated by toil, and there's time to break and sit on a steeply sloping field - 30 degrees or so - to listen to jazz and look out over the mountains; while eating a baguette.

All changes one night. Ander hasn't come home, and mother sends Arantxa off into the dark with a flashlight. She finds Ander in pain, he's broken his leg and she can't shift him. He sends her, gruffly, to fetch Peio. Peio is having sexual intercourse with Reme who he's hired for the night. Arantxa knocking on the door wakes Reme's small son (Unax Martin) - she was deserted by her husband when she became pregnant. She takes her son to work with her, bedding him down in another room; so the sound of a child crying awake in a house where there isn't normally a child means - in a small community - that Reme's in action. Peio tells Arantxa a cousin has come so that she doesn't tell her mother - the local upholder of standards. And he tells Ander, driving him to hospital, that Ander owes him 10,000 pesetas for Reme's bill. It's a fractured tibia (shinbone), and Ander's leg will be in a cast for 2 months.

They'll have to hire a man, but all the young men have left for Bilbao. Mother is cross that Ander didn't marry Begoña - 'She was big and strong'. Or anyone - 'If you were married we wouldn't have this problem'. Iñaki finds José, a Peruvian. 'And what do Peruvians eat' wonders mother? How, also will she understand him? She speaks the local Basque language, not Spanish. Ander and Arantxa speak both and will translate.

José gets an ice-cold reception from mother, and a place well down the table. At the midday break - lunch is 12 o'clock sharp - he and she eat in silence. He is a quiet, thoughtful well-mannered man, smaller than Ander, slim, courteous, hard-working. Ander takes to him immensely, which worries his mother who understands the significance. The injury means José must till the land, do all the farm work and animal husbandry. He milks the cows and sings, feeds the pigs - there's a worrying moment when he gets down behind a pig - no, no José - but it's all right, he's checking the damage to its leg. He drives Ander around, hold him upright while he urinates, is his servant and - though this comes later - hired hand. José is simply grateful - 'I only know how to work the land. I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity' - and addresses Ander formally, as 'boss'. He was one of several children - 'Four men, three women, two died'. When his father died, the family was kicked out of the land as they didn't own it, and his mother lives in Lima.

The lame pig is butchered and packed in the freezer, there's a stag night with Peio ('His dick and his nose drive him crazy' says Ander), with Ander, José and Peio taking turns to have sex with Reme - the 'Golden Whore'. José wakes on a sofa downstairs to find Reme sitting in an armchair looking at him. 'It's beautiful to watch people sleep' she says. 'We all become like babies.' The other two are crashed out around the house and Reme asks José not to mention her to Ander's mother when he goes to work.

The scene carefully and leisurely set, things come to a climax (literally) as a wedding, a funeral, and a divorce spur the flourishing of a delightfully-told, subtle, and heart-touching love story.

Cast Credits: (short credits, alpha order; full credits at www.imdb.com/title/tt1351734/): Eriz Alberdi - Iñaki. Joxean Bengoetxea - Ander. Christian Esquivel - Jose. Jose Kruz Gurrutxaga - Panadero. Juancho Kerejeta - Recepcionista. Unax Martin - Niño. Pedro Otaegi - Evaristo. Pako Revueltas. Mamen Rivera - Reme. Pilar Rodríguez - Madre. Leire Ucha - Arantxa. (source: www.imdb.com at 20 Oct 09).

Company Credits: (full credits at www.imdb.com/title/tt1351734/).

END

John Park

reviewed Thursday 8 October 2009 / press screening / NFT2 / National Film Theatre, London UK

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

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