‘Romería' Review: Carla Simón Dives Deep Into Painful Family History in an Act of Reclamation That's Equal Parts Shimmering and Meandering
Her journey, while essentially planned to complete bureaucratic requirements on a film school scholarship, becomes an exhumation of the parents she was too young to know, their histories veiled in secrecy, shame and the blurry lens of time. That lens is filtered through the curious gaze of accomplished French cinematographer Hélène Louvart (Never Rarely Sometimes Always, The Lost Daughter, La Chimera), whose work remains alluring, even when Simón's storytelling risks seeming rudderless.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
'The Wave' Review: Sebastián Lelio's Rousing but Elementary Feminist Musical
'Magellan' Review: Gael Garcia Bernal Plays the Famous Explorer in Lav Diaz's Exquisitely Shot Challenge of an Arthouse Epic
Cannes: Oliver Laxe's 'Sirat' Sells Wide Internationally
While the director has mostly switched here from the nonprofessional cast of Alcarràs to more seasoned actors, she entrusts the central role of her fictional counterpart Marina to impressive discovery Llúcia Garcia, who had no significant prior acting experience and was chosen after an exhaustive casting search.
When Marina goes to the records office to get a copy of her father's death certificate for her scholarship paperwork, she finds that it lists no children. To have her name added, she will need to obtain notarized signatures from the paternal grandparents she has never met, on the other side of the country. Armed with her camcorder, she travels in 2004 from Barcelona to the Atlantic coast, where her relatives live, in and around the port city of Vigo in Galicia.
That area was also the playground of her birth parents before she was born, and the underlying purpose of Marina's visit is evident in the film's title, the Spanish word for 'pilgrimage.'
She is met on arrival by her affable uncle Lois (Tristán Ulloa), who turns out to be among her more forthcoming relatives even if his recollections don't always correspond to what she was told as a child. There's also a rowdy bunch of cousins with whom she goes swimming off her uncle's sailing boat, yielding beautiful shots of bodies darting through the water over coral reefs around the Cíes Islands.
Marina's video footage of the coastal waters is accompanied by intermittent voiceovers from her mother's journal entries in the mid-'80s, and by chapter headings that can be a bit prosaic. (Those passages were adapted from letters that Simón's mother wrote to friends during her travels.) But while almost every distant relative she meets summons vague memories of her parents, either first-hand or gleaned from others, the timeline of where they lived at various points in the relationship remains vague. There's even some uncertainty about Marina's exact place of birth.
Any volunteering of information about her biological mother and father is instantly cut off when she meets her grandparents. Marina's imperious grandmother (Marina Troncoso) is a disagreeable snob, more concerned with getting a mani-pedi or keeping leaves out of her precious swimming pool than getting to know her granddaughter. (This later provokes a fabulously petty act of FU defiance from Marina.)
Her grandfather (José Ángel Egido) is ostensibly warmer, though Marina is dismayed to learn that he offered her father, Alfonso, a large sum of money as an incentive to stop seeing her mother. When Marina finds out her parents were using and possibly dealing heroin, her questions become more pointed. She's even more disturbed to learn that the family hid her father away when he got sick, allowing him no visitors.
The stigma of drug use and AIDS makes both grandparents prickly when pushed for information about Alfonso. This is especially apparent when her grandfather sits like a Mafia don while nephews, nieces and grandchildren line up to pay their respects. When Marina's turn comes, he hands her an envelope with a fat wad of cash, supposedly to cover her film school expenses but implicitly intended to make her stop asking uncomfortable questions.
All this becomes a bit discursive, and frankly, dull — almost like a coastal Carlos Saura family portrait without the politics and without the clean lines and character definition to make the sprawl of relatives especially interesting. There's a hint of flirtation and mutual attraction between Marina and an older cousin, Nuno (mononymous actor Mitch), but that remains more of a tease than a promise.
Things get more intriguing when Marina starts interacting with her parents, creating pictures and memories of them in her head. She first encounters them lounging on deck chairs on a terrace in blazing sunlight, like an apparition. By way of an introduction, they tell her, 'You see we're not dead. They just hid us away.' She pictures them wandering naked over rocks on the shoreline, embracing in the sand in a tangle of seaweed or lazing on a boat, watching dolphins.
In a departure from Simón's signature naturalistic approach, she drops in a fantasy sequence in which Marina and Nuno drift into a druggy nightclub, where they slide into a cool formation dance routine to Spanish pop. That segues for Marina into images of her parents both sensual and sad, shooting up or strung out in need of a fix. As disturbing as those pictures are, they at least provide Marina with some kind of access to the parents she was too young to remember. (Having Garcia double as Marina's mother and Nuno as her father was a nice touch.)
The final developments, specifically the circumstances by which Marina — and not her grandparents — gets to dictate the wording on her father's updated death certificate, are too rushed to be entirely clear. But as the outcome of a journey in which Marina fortifies her connection to two of the most important people in her life, it works well enough.
Romería is an elegant, visually poetic film, if slightly less lucid than the director's previous work. But it's an odd fit for the main competition in Cannes; its intimate investigation of family history and mystery likely would have played better in the eclectic Un Certain Regard sidebar.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts
Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT
'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Elle
an hour ago
- Elle
We Found the Chicest Ways to Wear Butter Yellow This Summer
This season, we're taking style cues from the dairy aisle. Butter yellow is the latest food-inspired hue to creep to widespread fame, and while it's hardly news that spring is a great time to wear pastels, this particular shade's ubiquity is too overwhelming to ignore. After a star turn on the spring/summer 2025 runways, the subtle lemon color has trickled down to countless retailers—the fun part for you is figuring out how to style it. Butter yellow is basically a color chameleon (read: a neutral). It can be delicate and ethereal, done in airy silhouettes like those seen at Chanel and Chloé. It can offer an equally pared-back alternative to hues like beige and white, like the minimalist structured tailoring and clean lines at Loewe or Toteme. It can be the foundation of a color-blocked ensemble, à la 16Arlington and Alaïa, or the star of an all-over buttery look, as with Jacquemus and Zimmerman. Somewhere between zingy citron and subdued sorbet, it's the perfect color to incorporate into your wardrobe if you're craving something fresh. To get you started with some styling inspiration, here are five editor-approved ways you can wear the butter-yellow trend this summer. Top off a coordinating knit vest and mini skirt with some slingback kitten heels. And, for a final finishing touch, try this shimmering French pin that looks remarkably like the aforementioned iridescent coat from Loewe's spring/summer 2025 season. For a high-contrast combination, pair your buttery yellow pieces with rich shades of merlot and dark cherry. This polished ensemble is tasteful enough to wear to the office. St. Agni's foldable flats can slip easily into your commuting bag, while Aligne's flouncy midi skirt will get a second life in your vacation wardrobe once you officially clock out for your PTO. This pale hue is perfect for brightening up moodier neutrals, from charcoal to olive green to navy. Try layering Vince's roomy butter-yellow polo over a gray button-down and navy trousers. As for accessories? Get in on this year's chunky aviators trend with an orange-tinted pair from Elisa Johnson. Butter yellow was practically made for summer weddings. Rather than lean into saccharine clichés, ground the sunny shade with bold patterns and textures; for example, a buttercream gown paired with snakeskin kitten heels and a studded black bag. Silver accents, like a cord pendant necklace and gleaming hair cuff, will add all the polish you need. Yellow, blue, and red may feel like an overpoweringly bold combination to wear all at once—but butter yellow, blue, and red? Completely different story. Here, Everlane's butter-yellow ribbed tee is a pared-back contrast to Leset's cornflower blue trousers and Intimissi's tomato-red crew socks. Paired with a rich chocolate brown layer and loafers, it makes an easy casual weekend look. Why Trust ELLE Every product featured on is independently researched, tested, or editor-approved. We only recommend products that we stand behind, and the merchandise featured on our site is always driven by editorial and product testing standards, not by affiliate deals or advertising relationships. Any content created in partnership with advertisers is marked as such.


UPI
2 hours ago
- UPI
Listen: Marina releases 'I'm Not Hungry Anymore' for 'Froot' anniversary
July 25 (UPI) -- Welsh singer-songwriter Marina celebrated the 10th anniversary of her album Froot by releasing the previously-unreleased track "I'm Not Hungry Anymore." The song dates from the era of the Froot recordings, but never saw official release until hitting digital platforms Friday to coincide with its inclusion on the "10 Year Anniversary Version" of the album, which also released Friday. "Originally released in 2015, Froot was a turning point in Marina's career, showcasing her songwriting and artistic independence," Marina's website states. The album was released under the stage name Marina and the Diamonds, which the singer has since dropped in favor of simply Marina. Marina's latest album, Princess of Power, released June 6.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Notorious French singer faces new probe over ex-wife's death
A notorious French singer who beat his girlfriend to death is to face a new legal investigation over the suicide of his ex-wife following a Netflix documentary about his violent behaviour, prosecutors said Thursday. Bertrand Cantat, former singer with popular 1980s rock band Noir Desir ("Black Desire"), was the subject of a widely watched three-part Netflix documentary that aired from March this year. He was sentenced to prison over the killing of actress Marie Trintignant in a Vilnius hotel room in 2003, but worked and performed after being released despite protests and calls for a boycott. Prosecutors in Cantat's hometown Bordeaux said in a statement Thursday they were looking into "potential acts of intentional violence" against his ex-wife Krisztina Rady, who was found hanged at her home in 2010. Prosecutors will look into "several claims and testimonies not included" in four previous investigations into the circumstances of Rady's death, all of which were closed without charges, the statement said. - A 'violent argument' - In "The Cantat Case" on Netflix, a nurse claims that Rady visited a hospital in Bordeaux "following an altercation with her partner, a violent argument" which had resulted in a "scalp detachment and bruises." The nurse said he consulted her hospital file out of "curiosity" in the archives of a hospital in the city where he was a temporary worker. Rady, a Hungarian-born former interpreter, had also left a terrorised message on her parents' answering machine before her death. In it, she referred to violence by Cantat, the documentary and a 2013 book written by two French journalists claimed. Bertrand Cantat's lawyer, Antonin Levy, said he was not aware of the reopening of an investigation into the case when contacted by AFP. - Albums and concerts - After being released from jail in 2007, the Bordeaux singer worked on a new album and toured with the band Detroit. His case sparked fierce debate, with many fans prepared to pardon his criminal record and seeing him as someone who had served out his punishment behind bars -- four years out of an eight-year sentence. Women's rights campaigners viewed him as a symbol of violent misogyny, even more so after the death of Rady in 2010. The release of his first solo album "Amor Fati" in 2017 sparked more controversy in the midst of the #MeToo movement, which saw women around the world speak out more forcefully about domestic violence and sexual assault. It led to several of Cantat's concerts being cancelled and protests from feminist organisations. At a major concert at the Zenith venue in northeast Paris in 2018 attended by thousands of fans, Cantat targeted journalists saying "I have nothing against you, you have something against me... I couldn't give less of a shit." gf-cko-adp/jj