El Camino
 

Posted on 14.10.2023

El Camino tells the story of life in a small village in a remote corner of Spain in the 1950s.

All ages and all types of people are represented. All their hopes too. Between religion, often confused with superstition, lonely women ready to do anything to feel they exist, and parents busy earning a living, the children move around intensely, playing, trying to prolong the frivolity of their youth as long as possible. Director Ana Mariscal (1923-1995), a great re-discovery of the 2023 Lumière film festival, creates a series of humorous, fast-paced sketches.

El Camino, 1964 © DR

El Camino thus reveals itself to be constantly on the move, motivated as much by joie de vivre as by the pettiness of small-minded old maids. And the filmmaker's great and beautiful idea is to portray all this with a fundamentally pleasant tone, without ever judging anyone, not even the teacher, an inadequate guy with a penchant for corporal punishment.

In the midst of this humanity struggling with increasingly untenable traditions, modernity appears. It comes in the form of the cinema, first through a publication with the ironic title Cinema, faith and ethics, and then through the screening of a film! Here again, Mariscal does not fall into the cliché of opposing reaction and progressivism, but rather has fun by mixing all the thoughts of her little characters who cannot do without each other, which is why, in the end, one feels a bit melancholy upon having to leave this world devoid of boredom!

Virginie Apiou

SCREENINGS
El Camino by Ana Mariscal (1964, 1h31)
Institut Lumière (Hangar) - Sat. 14 at 2pm
Lumière Terreaux - Thu. 19 at 2.30pm
Pathé Bellecour - Fri. 20 at 9.45pm