OBSERVER: Sunday
When a film is nearly two hours long and keeps an audience enthralled, it’s a good film.
Directed by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, Sundays (Los Domingos), a new Spanish film that looks at a rather different coming of age story, set in the modern-day Basque area of Spain.
Viewers meet 17-year-old Ainara (Bianca Soroa) in her final year in a co-ed Catholic school, and she is pondering where her path in life will lead her.
Her family, especially her loving but strong-willed aunt Maite (Patricia López Arnaiz), feel that this bright girl must head for university.
But Ainara is a devoutly Catholic girl who feels God is calling her to become a cloistered nun at a convent she has spent time at as a schoolgirl.
Not surprisingly, this puts the cat among the family pigeons. It’s a close family who gather for Sunday lunches where views are robustly expressed. Aunt Maite is Ainara’s close confidante, but she is a fierce atheist so when she hears of Ainara’s discernment process, she does not accept it well.
Much of the film is spent on the family opposition to Ainara’s quest, while Ainara herself tests her feelings with sympathetic sounding boards, her handsome spiritual director Father Txema (Victor Sainz), and the worldly-wise Mother Prioress (Nagore Aran-buru)who provide her with support while allowing her to test her vocation.
Sundays is Bianca Sorooa’s debut film role, and she has a superb quality of stillness on the screen and is a natural actor. There are fine performances from Sainz’s Father Txema and Aranburu’s Prioress, while as Maite, Lopez Amaiz is impressive and provides a necessary feisty foil to Soroa’s serene determination.
How audiences feel about Sundays will depend on the attitudes held. It may annoy dedicated atheists, but people of faith will identity strongly with the quest, and those between the two extremes will enjoy watching the journey of a young girl discovering where her heart is leading.
It is a riveting story, with wonderful choral music, and a strong dramatic narrative.
Sunday is showing at Palace Cinemas and Cinema Nova.
Julie Houghton

