REVIEW: Pray for Us
There are plenty of examples of Spanish filmmakers confronting dark aspects of their country’s history under dictator Francisco Franco, who died in 1975. For international audiences, recent titles might come to mind like this year’s Cannes and Toronto sensation The Black Ball (La Bola Negra), which tells three interlocking tales of repressed gay love, or Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers (Madres Paralelas), where Penélope Cruz’s character helps her village excavate a Civil War-era mass grave, and Bad Education (La Mala Educación), about historical abuse in Catholic boys’ schools.
Now Daniel Monzon’s Pray for Us (Ruega Por Nosotros), currently in competition at the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Sept 18-26), takes on a lesser-known chapter of that history: state-backed Catholic reform schools for girls, viciously overseen by nuns. The schools institutionalized violence against girls and young women in the name of moral salvation. Although they were opened in 1941, they didn’t officially close until 1985, ten years after Franco’s death and well into the country’s transition to democracy.
This is a past worth exposing, which its main talents reinforced at a press conference in San Sebastian. “This is one of Spain’s histories that hasn’t been told” and “needs to be taught in schools now,” co-star Manuela Calle said. Producer Sandra Tapia underscored how “recent” this wound is for Spain, while star Zoe Bonafonte reiterated that similar violence against women in the name of religion is still happening around the world.
Director Monzon and veteran scripter Jorge Guerricaechevarria choose to focus on two teenagers caught up in the system. Ana (Bonafonte) comes from a wealthy Catholic family in 1970s Barcelona. When she gets caught repeatedly sneaking out at night to meet up with friends, her parents decide to send her to the nuns. There, she meets Sole (Calle), a spirited young woman who quickly becomes a friend. The girls do their best to maintain their sanity and a sense of self as the nuns subject them to grueling labor and increasingly severe disciplinary punishments.
The film’s first act does a solid job setting up the characters so viewers feel as shocked and confused as Ana as to why her parents would commit her to an institution for normal teen behavior. We begin to understand the system alongside the girls and from their perspectives. Unlike other inmates, Ana’s parents are paying for her to be there, a status that comes with some benefits. But every time the girls try to stand up for themselves, they are punished and diminished. Still, friendships and a supportive atmosphere blossom among the girls, allowing for the film to have some moments of respite from the cruelty.
The film is classically filmed and structured, and clearly well-intentioned. But maybe because of their emotional connection to the material (the director said he owed it to his teenage daughter to tell this story), Monzon and Guerricaechevarria seemed to have trouble knowing where and what to leave out. Some of the resistance/punishment cycles start to feel repetitive in the second act. It’s fatal for such a worthy story to fatigue audiences, but that begins to happen in the last half hour of this 136-minute drama. A lack of selectiveness undermines this story’s power and does a disservice to its talented lead actresses, both of whom we are sure to see more of.
Originally published by AWFJ.org
Images courtesy of Elastica Films
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