The Sea

Mallorca, in the first days of the Spanish Civil War. Three children witness an execution in their town, and what they saw that day stays fixed to the rest of their lives. Years later the three of them meet again in a tuberculosis sanatorium. Death has become ordinary around them, and the account between them was never settled. Agustí Villaronga adapted Blai Bonet's novel of 1958. The book drew outrage on moral grounds when it appeared, and the film produced a comparable argument in 2000. What it is about is guilt, faith and desire running into one another. It is not an easy watch, and it is a genuine answer to one of the harshest texts in Catalan literature.