‘A House On Fire’: Review

Dir: Dani de la Orden. Spain/Italy. 2024. 105mins

A dysfunctional household gathers to look at itself collapse in an idyllic Costa Brava setting in Dani de la Orden’s darkish comedy A Home on Hearth. Neatly plotted and effectively performed, but in addition schematically scripted and psychologically blunt, Home entertainingly however uncomfortably straddles two completely different movies – one a slick, energetic farce redolent of the prolific director’s output to this point, and the opposite an edgy troubling examine of the hurt that cash does to like.

A sugar-coated skewering of the hypocrisies of the Catalan bourgeoisie

Although by no means fairly settling into both groove, the movie, which just lately opened BCN Movie Fest and can launch theatrically in Spain in June, is laced with beautiful performances and is solidly assembled, satisfyingly combining chuckles with contemplation. 

Montse (Emma Vilarasau) has determined to deliver her household collectively at their gorgeous cliff-side home on Spain’s Costa Brava to debate the sale of the property, in order that she will be able to use the proceeds to pay for a care residence for her mom. Travelling there together with her feckless son, wannabe musician David (Enric Auquer) and his girlfriend Marta (Macarena Garcia), Montse calls in on her mom – solely to search out that the outdated girl has died alone in her condo. Intriguingly, Montse leaves her mom as she is and doesn’t reveal her discovery. Any longer, the viewers will probably be much less inclined to belief the Machiavellian Montse than her household is.

They’re joined on the home by David’s stressed-out sister Julia (Maria Rodriguez), her easygoing, bland husband Toni (Jose Perez-Ocana) and their two youngsters, and later by Montse’s ex-husband, Carlos (Alberto San Juan), a shady, affable businessman. Carlos brings alongside his new girlfriend, Gestalt psychologist Blanca (Clara Segura), who seeks to place a lid on all of the simmering neurosis.

By way of some spiky, quickfire dialogue – which shifts between Catalan and Spanish – a number of stresses and tensions rapidly begin to fracture. The narcissistic David appears to be locked into everlasting adolescence, nonetheless anticipating his mom to iron his garments while composing dreadful love songs for Marta. Julia (Rodriguez Soto is a standout) is hating being a spouse and mom, and is exchanging X-rated textual content messages with an area waiter. Carlos, in the meantime, drops the bombshell that Montse isn’t really free to promote the property in any respect, as a result of – years earlier than and unbeknownst to her – he modified the identify on the deeds to his personal. 

Issues will not be improved by a task play sport instigated by Blanca, the place the household are requested to shut their eyes and picture themselves being rescued from a burning constructing (therefore the movie’s title), introducing a symbolic word of which the script makes fairly heavy climate.

Dramatically, issues play out by just a few properly staged set items. One has the distraught David taking Marta out for her first parachute soar instantly after she has dumped him, their dialogue on that subject understandably turning into more and more pressing as the bottom races as much as meet them. One other, altogether much less comedian however equally intense, has Julia’s youngsters disappearing on the seaside. (In these scenes, de la Orden’s cinematic chutzpah is on full show however, as in a lot of the remainder of the movie, the music is laid on too thick.) Much less profitable is a scene about who’s chargeable for leaving a full condom mendacity round: there may be the sense that A Home on Hearth actually doesn’t must stoop so low.

In its exploration of the dilemma of whether or not to promote a home to pay for an aged relative’s care the movie is, on one degree, a sugar-coated skewering of the hypocrisies of the Catalan bourgeoisie. The truth that nobody within the household other than Montse is ready to place granny earlier than the money speaks volumes a couple of society wherein love and grief have been monetized. However Eduard Sola’s script hesitates to research this darker facet too totally, holding issues firmly on the humorous aspect of the tragicomic divide.

But over its later scenes, as revelations deliver Montse again to centre stage and Vilarasau rises splendidly to the ultimate problem, A Home on Hearth does obtain the depth and richness it has been promising from the beginning. We’ve got been watching, we now realise, a movie in regards to the injury that may be wrought on a mom by a lifetime of filial ingratitude.