From Netflix and the director of The Red Squirrel and Sex and Lucía comes The Tree of Blood (El árbol de la sangre). This Spanish drama film directed by Julio Medem, and written by Medem and Scott Page-Pagter. As a young couple write the story of their families' shared history, both reveal their relatives' dark secrets and one must make a painful confession.
The film stars Álvaro Cervantes, Úrsula Corberó, Patricia López Arnaiz, Joaquín Furriel, Lucía Delgado, Luka Peros, Najwa Nimri, Daniel Grao, Luisa Gavasa, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Ángela Molina, and Josep Maria Pou. With the help of Medem and Page-Pagter's script, the cast's performances pushes all the right emotional buttons without getting overly melodramatic. Cervantes and Corberó are a sight to behold in tandem, but Corberó's endearing portrait is transcendent.
The Tree of Blood delves into social issues with delicate aplomb and across-the-board incredible acting, and stands as one of writer-director Medem's most powerful works. Moment after moment, scene after scene, the film unfolds with the fascination of eavesdropping. Medem finds a rhythm of life – not 'real life,' but real life as fashioned and shaped by all the art and skill his actors can bring to it – and slips into it, so that we are not particularly aware we're watching a film. The film is a flowering of his technique. It moves us on a human level, it keeps us guessing during scenes as unpredictable as life, and it shows us how ordinary people have a chance of somehow coping with their problems, which are rather ordinary, too. The film is Medem's best and most accessible work to date and that it will speak to everyone who has had these family skirmishes and confrontations in their lives, and it's remarkable to see them recorded so accurately and painfully on film. Medem's marvelous achievement is not only in capturing emotional clarity on film, but also in illustrating the ways in which families start to heal and find a certain bravery in their efforts. The film is one of the best of the eight features Medem had directed by then. The film is a piercingly honest, completely accessible piece of work that will go directly to the hearts of audiences who have never heard of him. If film means anything to you, if emotional truth is a quality you care about, this is an event that ought not be missed. Unforced, confident and completely involving, with exceptional acting aided by Kiko de la Rica's unobtrusive camera work and Elena Ruiz's telling editing, the film is filmmaking to savour. The film has elements of humour, sweetness, cruelty and directness of Medem's previous films but, somehow, the film has less emotional, tear-inducing and compassionate than its predecessors. It is not quite an extended, multilayered revelation, and you don’t get the full, complex picture until the final scene. In the end, the film is a magnificent melodrama that draws both tears and laughter from the everyday give-and-take of seemingly ordinary souls.
Simon says The Tree of Blood (El árbol de la sangre) receives:
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