Secaderos (Tobacco Barns), part generational drama around geographic change and part female coming of age story, opened the VIVA film festival this April to a sold-out crowd. It follows Vera (Vera Centenera Carnero) and Nieves (Ada Mar) over a summer in Southern Spain, the former a young girl visiting from the city and the latter a teenager who wishes to escape the boredom of her rural routine helping work the family’s tobacco plantation.
Much like the wheat fields of Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher or the plains of childhood imagination in Victor Eríce’s The Spirit of The Beehive, Rocio Mesa’s Secaderos transitions from the magical to the real within single shots, creating a potent blend of the two which universalises the wonder of youth but doesn’t shy away from confronting wider social problems.
The primary infusion of this magic comes from the characters’ interactions with a fantastical creature made from tobacco leaves who is mostly wordless other than mournful shrieks and somewhat resembles a slow-moving anthropomorphic owl. If this description sounds vague then it’s a testament to the unique creature design which confers an impressive amount of emotional depth and forms a powerful metaphor for environmental change.
Through an engagement with and deep interest in the land itself, from the tangible texture of tobacco leaves to the fraught decisions which allow for encroaching housing developments, Secaderos widens its scope of critique and creates a fascinating dialogue around the changing landscapes of Southern Spain. These themes also speak to a wider loss of agriculture and, to some extent, more broad traditions in communities across the globe.
Nevertheless, in this attempt to capture varying stories of environmental change and female coming-of-age through a blend of realism and fantasy, the film may be almost too ambitious. This all comes together in a stylistically bold final act which at times feels unfocused and can be a little technically jarring.
Similarly, where the smaller budget rarely shows elsewhere, the use of a particular special effect later on, unfortunately, feels a little too artificial and somewhat cheapens the dramatic impact. However, it also has many of the hallmarks of a debut feature in the most invigorating sense as it’s full of fascinating ideas and exciting technical experiments.
There is a particularly striking use of light in the cinematography, from the light which seeps through the cracks of the barn to teenager Nieves using her earring as a reflector of sunlight. These visual tricks are not only aesthetic though but also help to highlight the wonder of the natural world, collapsing the magical and the real into one entrancing, cinematic space.
Secaderos manages to balance its timely political commentary with a fantastical take on the traditional coming-of-age storylines, but it doesn’t strike quite the same delicacy with its stylistic choices. Nonetheless, the film is an exciting watch, brimming with ideas and promises a lot for Rocio Mesa’s career to come.
3/5
Secaderos screened as part of the 30th VIVA Festival at HOME Cinema
