The cold drop is approaching and people in the town are nervous about all that it means. The last time the river fell in love with a girl, the flood swept away everything in its path, leaving a deep mark that the mere mention of it terrifies and intrigues. No one knows when it will happen again, or who will carry the water, but gossips suspect that the clouds are stalking a family of women from the town and the storm is coming.
With this disturbing premise about the images of the countryside of the Vega Baja Alicante, Elena Lopez Rivera raises a powerful fantastic drama to the slipstream of the new wave of spanish cinema feminine and decentralized gaze. A new voice from the periphery that follows in the footsteps of her generation mates in the portrait of the new youth of rural Spain.
Elena López Riera films her first fiction feature film in Orihuela, the town where she grew up and from which she has internalized the myth of ‘Water’an urban legend that, as in the film, is passed down from generation to generation and should not be questioned.
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Between the documentary look and the popular tale
Thus, the fiction of the most deeply rooted superstition in popular culture is mixed with the truth of a filmmaker who is used to watching from the viewfinder of documentary cinema. Fantasy and reality intersectinfluence and confuse each other, molding and creating each other, as in the best tales of popular tradition.
With the honest look rooted in the land and, therefore, far from the preciousness of the tourist vision that others suffer from, the filmmaker from Alicante delves into the dichotomy between the freedom of the countryside and the oppression of the people, where tradition is synonymous with everyday life and the superstition of beliefs transmitted a way of life.
To the weight of the legacy and the inheritance received, add a supernatural element that keeps the intrigue of a popular portrait, supported by the naturalness of its diverse people. An expression loaded with symbolism of that certain determinism that often accompanies those who grow up with the feeling of belonging without escape.
Like its contemporaries, ‘El agua’ is built on the strength of a woman, the debutante Luna Pamiés, which transmits a power capable of dragging the river itself with it. A feminine look from the youth of a new generation of Spanish women who take over from their mothers and grandmothers the relief of life in the countryside, and who, unlike them, take the floor, playing an active role as a factor of change.
Elena López Riera’s, which is competing in the Directors’ Fortnight, is the first Spanish film that we have been able to see at Cannes so far. We started strong with a performance that this year promises more joy. Together with Juan Luis Caviaro we keep reporting from the Croisette, on Twitter (jlcaviaro Y Sara_M_Ruiz).