Forasters

I had the privilege to attend the inauguration of Forasters with the Catalan director Ventura Pons and the actors of the film, to Barcelona.

Forasters is a film of current customs which tells the story the same family which lives two traumatic facts with forty years of difference and the arrival of new neighbors so foreign, what redraws and emphasizes the immigration with its pros and its double.

It is true that the beginning of the film make that we feel as nailed in the armchair and sometimes we intend to lower eyes because gestures and especially the dialog are emotional and hard but so realistic that it is difficult finally for the spectator not to recognize it sometimes in moments of our life.

In Barcelona, in the 60's, the selfish, rude and wicked Emma (Anna Lizaran) is the hateful matriarch of a dysfunctional family. Her husband Francesc (Joan Pera) is a pushover; her son Josep (Dafnis Balduz) is homosexual and her daughter Anna (Aida Oset) is a rebel teenager. They live in an environment of hatred and prejudice against their upstairs immigrant neighbors. Emma is terminal and when she dies, the pregnant Anna breaks up the relationship with her brother and father and vanishes. In the present days, Anna (Anna Lizaran) returns to her father's apartment ill after an absence of forty years and rejected by her son. She meets her father married with his housemaid Patrícia (Marieta Sánchez) but her brother Josep (Manel Barceló) and her rebel niece Rosa (Georgina Latre) support her in her deathbed. The awkward situations of her family repeat in a déjà vu forty years later.

"Forasters" is a heavy drama about a dysfunctional family in their apartment in two different moments separated by forty years that has the intention to reflect the situation of Europe in a small universe. When the terminal Anna throws up on the floor, Patrícia makes a comment that clearly discloses the intention of the author to make a metaphor with the European society. The acting is top-notch and the cinematography is stylish; however the screenplay with two segmented parallel narratives is confused despite the use of different hues, since the development of the characters is not easy to understand. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available