CRÍTICS: Surfacing (La llegada del hijo), San Sebastián, 2024.

By Alfonso Rivera

September 25, 2024 – Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato’s second, stimulating feature film joins the ranks of titles that vigorously and boldly question the untouchable happiness that motherhood seemed to entail.

La llegada del hijo [ + ], a film written and directed by Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato, had its world premiere in the New Directors competitive section of the 72nd San Sebastián International Film Festival. The Argentine filmmakers are thus participating in this festival with a joint work for the second time, since their first film, La novia del desierto, was screened in Horizontes Latinos after having been featured in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2017.

This new story, with a strong psychological charge and visual power, stars Maricel Álvarez (seen in Biutiful [ + ] and who just yesterday at this festival read part of a manifesto in support of her country’s cinema, which is in crisis due to government measures), Angelo Mutti Spinetta, who plays her troubled son; Cristina Banegas, in the role of the central character’s severe, wealthy mother; and Spanish actress Greta Fernández (who won the Silver Shell for Best Actress at this very festival for her work in A Thief’s Daughter [ + ]), portraying the boy’s swimming instructor.

This proposal, then, is about families, silences, repressions, and motherhoods, supported by details, suggestions, and locations that are as beautiful as they are dramatic, gradually building the emotional state not only of the protagonist but of the entire film. It tells how Sofía, mired in a secret grief, must welcome her son home after years behind bars. This reunion will give both of them the opportunity to overcome the insurmountable distance that has separated them since the incident that landed the boy in prison.

With a painful tone of mystery that flutters throughout the premise and slowly unveils the terrible secrets hidden by the characters in this drama, The Arrival of the Son—much like we used to talk about Kevin [+], but without reaching its kamikaze extremes—speaks of terrifying motherhood, the chains it sometimes forges, and the dependencies that also develop between mother and offspring. To this must be added a certain air of incest, since even the lead actress bears a slight resemblance to Jill Clayburgh in Bernardo Bertolucci’s La luna, another film about excessive emotional attachments.

Furthermore, the arrival of the son is portrayed within a social class that has everything materially but lacks mental flexibility. It shows in detail how domination among household members is dangerously normalized and how homophobia can lead to painful, castrating, and shameful repressions. But above all, it shows that the golden dream of motherhood can turn into an agonizing nightmare, as one of the lines heard in this thought-provoking feature film expresses when the protagonist first sees her baby, fresh from her womb: “I felt joy and horror at the same time.”

La llegada del hijo is a Spanish-Argentine co-production by Setembro Cine, Tarea Fina, and Tandem Films. The U.S. agency Visit Films will handle its international sales, and BTeam Pictures will handle its theatrical distribution in Spain.