Camino: 143 minutes. Director: Javier Fesser. Starring: Nerea Camacho, Carme Elias, Mariano Venancio, Manuella Vellés
'Camino is meant to be a story told from an objective angle, free from prejudice or stereotyped mindsets', says writer-director Javier Fesser. 'A film which regards reality with a generous gaze, without judging it. Rather like an x-ray image.'
Perhaps x-ray is not the right word. Rather, Camino provides an image of religion shown at close proximity. The result is a portrayal of the Catholic Church in Spain that is at once limited, humane and not entirely flattering.
It is set in the cloistered world of Opus Dei, the lay Catholic movement in which the patriarchal is shown to border on the oppressive. Its hero is Camino (Camacho), a young girl drawn towards painful death by an insidious tumour.
The word camino is Spanish for path or journey. Tellingly, it is a masculine noun, and Camino's journey is defined by masculine forces.
The Opus Dei hierarchy and its emphasis upon a Father-God have displaced the nurturing instincts of Camino's mother, Gloria (Elias). Her piety shrouds her humanity, and so she lovingly urges Camino along the path of suffering, and implores her to be grateful that she has been chosen by God for the privilege.
There is little in Gloria's treatment of her daughter to evoke sympathy. The same can not be said of Camino's father, José (Venancio), whose deep love for his daughter is undermined by his wife's overbearing piety.
He has been supplanted by the Church as the paternal figure in his family. His elder daughter, Nuria (Vellés), has been called to a vocation within the movement, and Gloria is prompting Camino along the same path. José has been emasculated, and thus seems unable to assert his more tender instincts towards his daughters. So Camino is left unshielded from her mother's persuasive rhetoric.
Camino's path leads towards sainthood. The film was inspired by the true case of Montse Grases, a girl who died young and is in the process of being beatified. It raises questions about the manipulation of the process that leads to the beatification of one so young.
But these questions are not Camino's. Perfectly cast, Camacho brings to Camino a luminescence that dissipates the clouds that surround her.
To her, the idea of being 'chosen' by God brings an abiding terror. Camino is perplexed by her cooking teacher's waxing on the theme of vocation, and baffled by her sister's abandoning