‘Solas’ Tells Warm Tale of Mother and Daughter

“Solas,” a film that attests to the timeless power of simplicity, marks the feature debut of writer-director Benito Zambrano, destined to take his place in the front ranks of Spanish filmmakers. “Solas,” whose title refers to two women, a mother and daughter, both alone in their own way, is one of those quiet, unassuming little movies that sneaks up on you and knocks you for a loop.

Ana Fernandez is the daughter, Maria, 35 and single. She’s just moved into a once-elegant but now-faded apartment house in the dangerous, run-down neighborhood of San Bernardo in Seville. The hard-drinking Maria might be beautiful were she not so gaunt-looking and embittered. She lands a job as a cleaning woman working the night shift in a luxe office building--clearly the best work she can hope for.

She is one of four children of a brutal, drunken peasant (Paco De Osca), who is in a nearby hospital recovering from surgery. Her siblings have all moved to northern Spain, leaving her to cope with a father she justifiably hates and with a mother, Rosa (Maria Galiana), she cannot respect for having put up with him.

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Maria has seriously underestimated her mother, who has accompanied her husband from their village and who has been welcomed by her daughter with an undisguised lack of enthusiasm. Rosa is a plump, plainly dressed woman who looks to be in her late 60s. She may well have been a beauty in her youth and continues to radiate an inner glow--should you take the trouble to notice.

She is a traditional-minded woman who long ago has learned to accept her lot in life, to look inside herself for the strength to endure and to tap into her moral imagination for sustenance. We are never told whether she is devoutly religious or not, but Rosa is a woman of towering spiritual strength, refusing to slide into the bitterness and cynicism consuming her daughter, accepting people and situations as she finds them.

One of the key recipients of Rosa’s attentiveness is her daughter’s neighbor, a handsome, dignified older man (Carlos Alvarez-Novoa), a lonely widower who has only his dog for a companion. As Maria copes with the consequences of having becoming involved with a virile but cruelly cold truck driver, a man surely not unlike her father, Rosa awaits the recovery of her husband, who berates her as a stupid old woman but cannot escape intimations of his own mortality.

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Rosa is drawn into a friendship with her daughter’s courtly neighbor, who treats her with kindness and respect from a man for the first time in her life. In the most overpowering of several extraordinary sequences, Rosa calmly copes with the neighbor’s diarrhea, good-humoredly preserving his dignity, getting him into his shower and making his bed. So serenely in command of her every gesture is Galiana that her Rosa becomes for a moment the eternal nurturing wife and mother figure. The neighbor and Rosa exchange a glance that tells us in an instant the depth of their mutual feelings.

The sheer implacability of Rosa’s glowing serenity cannot help but ultimately impact upon her daughter, and the way in which Zambrano resolves “Solas” reveals his mastery of his medium and his grasp of human nature. Alternately heart-wrenching, dismaying, raw and even funny, “Solas” is ultimately a wonderfully warm and embracing experience.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: mature themes and situations.

‘Solas’

Ana Fernandez: Maria

Maria Galiana: Rosa

Carlos Alvarez-Novoa: The Neighbor

Paco De Osca: The Father

A Samuel Goldwyn Films-Fireworks Pictures release of a Maestranza Films production. Writer-director Benito Zambrano. Producer Antonio P. Perez. Cinematographer Tote Trenas. Editor Fernando Pardo. Music Antonio Meliveo. Production designer Lala Obrero. In Spanish, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

Exclusively at the Westside Pavilion, 10800 W. Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 475-0202; Town Center 4, Bristol at Anton, South Coast Plaza, (714) 751-4184 or (714) 777-FILM (No. 086).