‘As Neves’: Malaga Review

Dir/scr: Sonia Mendez. Spain. 2023. 83mins

A thoroughly contemporary tragedy unfolds in the timeless setting of rural Galicia, northwest Spain, in Sonia Mendez’ feature debut As Neves, an intimate, engrossing and heartbreaking study of a hyper-connected generation in a hyper-isolated town. 

A sharp-eyed but compassionate piece

Focusing on the social impact of an inappropriately-shared Instagram video, this sharp-eyed but compassionate piece is part thriller, part teen drama and part critique of how the dark tentacles of digital tech reach into and transform faraway communities. But it is the haunted faces of its youngsters that will linger in the mind. Further festival performances should beckon for a film which feels very much in tune with our new scepticism about the ethics of social media.

The cast is made up of mostly local, non-professional teens, superbly directed by Mendez. Paula (Antia Marino) and Erea (Andrea Varela) are preparing for a night out at a party during the fiestas in the small Galician town of As Neves (which translates to ‘the snows’) along with their gang, all members of the school handball team. All we know before the party kicks off is that Paula is having problems with boyfriend Manu (David Fernandez), partly because Paula has discovered that she prefers girls.

At the party, mushrooms are consumed and we are plunged straight into a dizzying, lengthy music and dance nightclub sequence. Given that we know nothing about the characters, this sequence initially feels as though it has come too early – but it’s what happens during and after that will drive the rest of the film. It is also the last time the kids will have fun.

Late into the evening, Manu is disturbed to receive – from an unknown account – a video featuring Paula kissing another girl. After a brief, angry exchange between Paula and Manu, Paula walks out into the snowy darkness. The next day, when she fails to return home, the search parties go out and the nightmare begins. 

One by one, the teenagers are quizzed by their teachers and policewoman Sergeant Portas (Lucia Veiga). But the event has driven a wedge through the community, because neither the contents of the video nor the consumption of the mushrooms can be shared with the adults, who would, as various kids insist, “kill them” if they knew. Pressed for evidence, Manu claims, perhaps truthfully, that he has no memory of what happened, since one after-effect of taking mushrooms is memory loss: the offending video is eventually deleted by the numbed group.

Punishment comes in the burden of guilt they feel as they struggle to figure out whose fault it is that Paula has disappeared. Is it Paula herself? Manu? Whoever made and shared the video? All of them or none? Interestingly, none of the teens pin the blame for Paula’s disappearance on either the town’s dull, repressive adults – or indeed on Instagram itself. It feels like a cruel and lasting punishment for bored youngsters, living in a boring town, most of whose thrills come through a handheld screen. 

Most of the dramatic weight falls on the shoulders of Varela as Erea, who does terrific work, often in close-up, as she tries to negotiate both the pain she is feeling and, as Paula’s confidante, the moral dilemma she suddenly finds herself in. Likewise, Fernandez’s beetle-browed, brooding looks are the perfect vehicle for Manu’s inner torment as he drives the tractor around the fields at his father’s farm, which will likely be his future: he has woken up with a wound on his body and is frightened that he may have had an altercation with Paula before she left, but cannot remember.

The physical isolation of As Neves, presented via lengthy landscape shots, becomes a potent metaphor for the isolation of the teens. A storm comes, cutting off internet coverage altogether. The viewer is left with the thought that, had this happened earlier, great pain might have been avoided.

Mendez’s treatment of all this is even-handed, non-judgmental and entirely non-sensationalist; the events are presented via documentary-like hand-held camera, without any implicit commentary. The focus is always on the human consequences, never on the thrills of the mystery of who took and shared the video, which is revealed late on, almost as an afterthought. Andy Bell’s electronic score is discreetly employed to hint at the uncertainty and sense of horror that ultimately define the tone of Mendez’s accomplished debut.