LFF: The Dream and the Silence

Over the past decade, Jaime Rosales has established himself as one of Spain’s most original directors. His bold and beautiful films have been unafraid of tackling difficult or uncomfortable subjects – from the psyche of a serial killer in his first film, The Hours of the Day (2003) to the moments leading up to a terrorist assassination in Bullet in the Head (2008). For his fourth feature, framed by two short sequences featuring Miquel Barceló, one of Spain’s leading painters, at work, Rosales explores the devastation that hits a family following a shocking bereavement. The glacial black-and-white palette works brilliantly in conveying this world bereft of colour, while the camerawork, at once both distancing and involving, expertly captures the desolation and miscommunication that ensues as the family try and come to terms with the implications of an accident that throws their comfortable world into disarray.