Libertad

Clara Roquet's first feature takes place in a summer house on the Costa Brava. The Vidal family are on holiday with Angela, the grandmother, who has Alzheimer's. Nora, fourteen, has withdrawn into herself since her parents separated; the arrival of Libertad, the daughter of the woman who works in the house, changes the summer entirely. The film builds the friendship between the two girls without ever losing sight of the class difference. Nora admires Libertad's freedom, but the looseness in Libertad's life also means nobody is looking after her. The film shows that asymmetry rather than explaining it. Roquet neither sentimentalises adolescence nor dramatises it. The adult world stays in the background, and the running of the house depends entirely on invisible labour that the camera keeps pointing at. It screened in Critics' Week at Cannes. Who it's for: those who like Spanish cinema built on adolescence and class. Who it's not for: viewers waiting for dense incident; the film moves slowly across one summer and stages no large crisis.