A House on Fire

Montse gathers her family for one last weekend at the summer house on the Costa Brava before it is sold. She has been divorced a long time, her ex-husband has a new life, and her grown children have made a habit of keeping their mother outside their own. The house will be sold, but the thing nobody talks about is something else: an event years ago that sits differently in everyone's memory. Dani de la Orden shot it in Catalan and set a line of grief that grows steadily heavier beneath the family comedy. Emma Vilarasau plays the mother without making her endearing and carries the entire film. It became the highest-grossing Catalan-language film in Spain, and the cast objected openly to being dubbed entirely into Spanish for Netflix. Who it is for: viewers who like Spanish comedy drama built on a family gathering. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a light holiday film.