La ultima primavera (2020)

Directed by: Isabel Lamberti | 77 minutes | drama | Actors: María Duro Rego, David Gabarre Duro, David Gabarre Jiménez, Alejandro Gabarre Mendoza, Angelines Gabarre Mendoza, David Gabarre Mendoza, Isabel Gabarre Mendoza, Ángelo Gabarre Mendoza, Agustina Mendoza Gabarre

When project developers try to push through plans to demolish the Madrid suburb of ‘La Cañada Real’, despair hits the already underprivileged families who live there. Director Isabel Lamberti follows one of those families in her wonderful mix of fiction and documentary film ‘La última primavera’. The close-knit Gabarre Mendoza family actually exists, as does the makeshift suburb where hundreds of families (literally and figuratively) reside on the fringes of society. The project developer’s plans have not been invented either, although Lamberti has already taken them a little further in her film and staged them here and there. For example, the film offers a glimpse into the future rather than a completely fictional story: the main characters play out their own future, director Lamberti himself said.

And that’s a great find: in this way she takes the freedom to capture the authenticity of the characters in all facets, but not to be tied to an exact reality or a boarded-up plot. In this way she keeps the options open: she shows the day-to-day business of the family, the clothing and interiors, but also the intimate details of the mutual relationships, the friendships and the community. At the same time, she decides for herself which way the film goes and sometimes helps reality along the way. She takes “her inspiration from reality, without being limited by the truth,” Lamberti explained.

For ‘Volando voy’ (2015), her graduation film at the Netherlands Film Academy, the young Dutch-Spanish director already followed David and Jesús, the youngest two brothers of the Gabarre Mendoza family, and has kept in touch with the family ever since. In ‘La última primavera’, in addition to the brothers, we also get to know father David Sr., a scrap dealer who tries as best he can against the authorities and tries to fight his way through the bureaucracy. Typical is the supervised ‘course’ in which he participates, led by a social worker who can hardly mean anything. His wife, the cheerful and caring Augustina, is beginning to lose faith in a happy ending, and then there is the pregnant daughter, and the third son, who is raising a son with his young girlfriend in the cramped house.

The realization that everything will change, their homes will disappear, just like the close contacts with the neighbors, causes great concern for all family members. We feel that as a viewer, although little is said about it explicitly. The uncertain future hangs over the conversations and events, but in the meantime life goes on. David Jr. tries to find a job, the boys work out in the grounds, Grandma peels the potatoes and sings some impromptu flamenco while Angelo’s girlfriend has an emotional time with her mother, who clearly has her doubts. her daughter’s living situation (and in-laws).

The vulnerable moments in which so much remains unsaid provide an intimate portrait of a special family. More than that, the film raises questions: is it really not possible to protect vulnerable families? Why is there so little room for an alternative lifestyle and form of living? Why is it that rich people are subsidized if they want to start a ‘sustainable housing group’, while poor people are bullied out of their homes that they have built without any help from the municipality? While it remains uncertain where it will ultimately go for the protagonists, these questions will haunt the viewer’s mind for a long time to come.