Cork

There’s heat and intensity to this Catalan language film about a city couple facing a tricky first season in charge of a cork farm even before any of the locals talk about the risk of fire. We see it burning between Elena (Vicky Luengo) and Ivan (Pol López) on the dance floor, an environment which will later prove a stage for another scene of emotional outpouring. The pair, who are expecting their first child, move to a rundown finca, once owned by Elena’s grandmother. In addition to inheriting the house and the cork tree woodland that it sits within, they also end up with grandma’s donkey, Poum, one of just a few overcooked elements that betrays this is Basaque director Mikel Gurrea’s first full-length feature.

Elena has big ambitions for the farmhouse, something Ivan has misgivings about as he believes her grand designs are out of keeping with the setting. This is just one indication of his holier than thou attitude, which extends to a determination to not just hire workers to harvest the cork but to work alongside them and learn the trade.

Gurrea carefully lays down bits of tinder, which are thankfully, on the whole, treated with much more subtlety than the instruction that the gate must be kept shut for Poum. There’s the warning from the local farming co-operative to make sure their water tank and hoses are ready with dry weather and wind threatening. “They sound like the Apocalypse is coming,” the couple joke. Then, there’s the decision not to go with the co-operative but with a bloke who offers them a good deal and who later turns up with a team that is a mixture of migrant Morrocans - disparagingly referred to by the locals as “Moors” - and regional manpower. You can almost hear the creak of tension between these different groups, exacerbated by Ivan who is at odds with Elena over his opinion that the foreign workers are being exploited and who decides to help inexperienced teenage labourer Karim (Ilyass El Ouahdani) much to her initial chagrin.

Although Gurrea’s film is booby trapped for explosions, he repeatedly chooses the more interesting slow-burn path, whether he’s considering the shifting power play between Elena and Ivan, as the dynamic pushes and pulls, especially once Karim enters the mix. This is a film about looking after your environment in every sense of the phrase. The macro element of this is represented by those trees, with Gurrea showing just how skillful the practice of harvesting the cork sustainably is, while the sociopolitical environment is brought into focus by the attitudes towards the migrant workers. Just as meaningful is the home environment the pair are cultivating for themselves, with Gurrea pointedly showing how for all Ivan’s big talk it is Elena who continually proves the provider of practical solutions.

Tensions hang in the air like the summer heat ane Gurrea keeps us guessing as we wait to see which way the winds will eventually blow.