Estibaliz Urresola competes for the Golden Bear with a mature and ambitious debut, in which the search for the identity of a trans girl triggers a family catharsis
The Berlinale that consecrated Carla Simón, jury in this edition, appears as the best possible platform to introduce the world to Estibaliz Urresola, who shares thematic and stylistic affinities with the director of ‘Alcarràs’. Simón has had to like a film like ‘20,000 species of bees’, which, like ‘Summer 1993’ and ‘Alcarràs’, tries to capture the naturalness and truth of family relationships while being faithful to a space and an idiosyncrasy.
Unlike Simón and his celebrated ‘Alcarràs’, the author of ‘Cuerdas’ makes use of professional actors, although the soul of the story rests on the gaze of a nine-year-old girl, Sofía Otero, who had never stood in front of a camera. Ambition is not lacking in the director of Llodio, who enriches the central theme –the reaffirmation of the feminine identity of the little girl– with multiple collateral notes and symbolisms. Maybe too many.
Throughout the 127 minutes of ‘20,000 species of bees’ (a complicated title to sell the film), we witness a crucial summer in the life of the leading family. The marriage formed by Patricia López Arnáiz and Martxelo Rubio is cracking. So she takes her three children and leaves Baiona to return to her mother’s (Itziar Lazkano) house. In Llodio, with nature in the foreground and the silhouette of factories in the background, also lives Aunt Lourdes (Ane Gabarain), who collects honey and uses bees for healing purposes.
Eight-year-old Cocó (Sofía Otero) will serve as a catharsis for all of them. She has long looked androgynous, with long hair. She doesn’t understand why they call him Aitor and she pees standing up. Nor the distinction of the changing rooms in the town pool, for boys and for girls. Aitor wants to be called Lucía. Everyone around her knew something was wrong with her, but they didn’t dare to address it. Until this summer they will have to admit that they have a daughter, a granddaughter.
‘20,000 species of bees’ advocates crossing borders, including the line that separates Baiona from Llodio: this is a film in which Basque, Spanish and French are heard. Urresola seeks naturalism in the dialogues between the mother and the little ones, the fruit undoubtedly of multiple essays. Gender dysphoria is approached with some didacticism but with emotion. “Why am I like this?” asks little Cocó, who is accompanied in her daily life by the shame of her body and the judgment in the eyes of others. She also wonders about faith and baptism, the act in which we are assigned a name. This is a key aspect in the film’s theses: the eyes of others build us.
Itziar Lazkano in ‘20,000 species of bees’.
In this summer of initiation there is room for many more conflicts. The mother is on the verge of a vital ‘reset’ after putting her vocation as a sculptor on hold, inherited from an artist father who slept with her models. Behind her success was always her wife (Itziar Lazkano), who swallowed and kept the accounts. Pragmatic, she can’t understand now that her grandson wears girl’s dresses. She thinks they spoil her too much. Fortunately, Aunt Lourdes, in communion with nature, encourages the little girl to feel comfortable in her skin.
Shot with an almost entirely female technical and artistic team (Lara Izagirre and Valérie Delpierre are the producers of the film, which has photography directed by Gina Ferrer, art by Izaskun Urkijo and sound by Eva Valiño), ‘20,000 species of bees’ defends that we are as diverse as those insects with whose honey the protagonist makes sculptures and the ‘argizaiolas’ are made to watch over the dead. In this bucolic Basque Country there is also a place for bee stings as an alternative medicine.
Little Sofía Otero in ‘20,000 species of bees’.
Estibaliz Urresola wants to go much further than telling us about a trans childhood as Sébastien Lifshitz did in the documentary ‘Una niña’, in which the little girl’s transit meant that she was deprived of her childhood. The family inheritance, the different attitude towards the heteropatriarchy of women of three generations and the marital wear and tear enrich this slow-cooked drama, in which a bath in a river can be purifying. To be born again, defends this mature debut, is at our fingertips.
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