The debutant Laia Artigas, who has done a job that she can turn her back on, embodies a character named Frida. The same virus that a few years ago led his father, which is not specified, but it is clear what it is, on this occasion he has permanently shut down his mother's life. From this point of departure, Carla Simon’s camera stands in Frida’s perspective and makes us witness from the very beginning to the life that awaits him. We'll feel like we're there secretive conversations, sunrise churchouts, understanding gestures, contempt or an unforgettable sequence that happens in the playground. The film constantly goes through an unusual level of sensitivity, sharing anguish, laughter and crying in different scenes. To do that X-ray of this harsh childhood, moreover, it never falls into easy sentimentalism at any time. It uses in a subtle and very effective way all the tools offered by the language of cinema. Playing with a perfect structure of plans and using the natural lighting that has the brush of the great Victor Erice, in a few moments we will feel that we are Frida, but in others that we are his new family. My mother, my father, my little, unforgettable sister. There is no room for manoeuvring, but there is no room for that complexity that has flourished from a tragedy and that human relations can offer us.

For example, the hard sequence of the phone. It seems simple, yes, naïve, but within the main character it will mark a turning point. Two kids playing with the phone call the mother's house they just lost. One tone two, three… five… on the other side of the phone there is no one. This six-year-old boy doesn't get an answer. The shades are lost in silence, the girl does not release the phone at any time. Without words, without tears, only a small gesture, but from that moment on Frida will be another girl. Well, it's the same, but it's becoming increasingly aware of reality. He will never see his parents again and his life in Barcelona is over forever.

I mentioned Victor Erice. But not only because of that natural aesthetic, or because the protagonist is a child who has to adapt to the rural environment, but because this wonderful storytelling with brushes of The Spirit of the Beehive of 1973 is a masterpiece of small gestures. And above all, because as in the works of Erice, small situations with small sentences provoke gigantic reflections. Not all the important things are said through the words, but the viewer interprets them by adding the aforementioned cinematic tools. Children playing to be “adults”; the terrible moment hidden in the forest; the mattress that is seen in the background; the gazes of the “new” mother; the moment when grandparents go in the car; and above all, the end. Often final. Starting with an interfamily game, until they take us to that moment that is able to put goose bumps. Once again, without speaking, the outbreak of feelings. The impressive Laia Artigas, far exceeding the level required by this sequence. As if I had worked for twenty years as an actor in a previous life. When I realized that the screen was blackened and the 96 minutes passed, I noticed that the film perfume was still in the air, and that, being at the time we're in, is wonderful.