‘Dismantling An Elephant’: Seville Review

Dir: Aitor Echevarría. Spain/France. 2024. 82mins

A carefully constructed family drama about the impact of a mother’s alcoholism on a well-to-do Barcelona family, Aitor Echevarria’s feature debut Dismantling An Elephant sets up a tiny, privileged world and then submits it to careful scrutiny with variable results. Despite fine central performances and an appropriately airless mood, which at times threatens to become asphyxiating, the script’s refusal to make space for the bigger picture means the film lacks a cutting edge. It may travel further around the festival circuit and will open in Spain in January, but further prospects could be limited.

Distinctly lacking a cutting edge

Architect Marga (Emma Suarez, best known to international audiences for Pedro Almodovar’s Julieta) has returned to the family – daughter Blanca (Natalia de Molina) and husband Felix (Dario Grandinetti) – after two months spent in rehab after she nodded off, drunk, while the kitchen burned. Marga’s recovery will now continue with crowded group therapy sessions in which the family is invited to participate and the consumption of tablets that turn your skin red when mixed with alcohol.

Marga’s addiction dominates not only her life, but that of her family as well. Understandably, this creates domestic tensions which the script records with sensitivity and psychological accuracy: a blocked sink and a plumber who won’t show up become, for example, an issue of titanic proportions. 

The film’s title refers to the elephant in the room; initially Marga’s alcoholism but essentially its impact on the family. Thus the picture is about Blanca as much as it is about Marga; perhaps even more so. Blanca seeks creative escape from the family via involvement in a dance troupe, but as things advance, even that is threatened. As often happens, someone outside the home can provide some necessary perspective on things – in this case, Blanca’s sister Maria (Alba Guilera), who now lives in France and has just given birth to Marga’s grandson, a baby who is central to perhaps the film’s most striking sequence.

All these messy emotions play out in an exquisitely appointed, spacious home in the Barcelona suburbs, lovingly framed by DoP Pau Castejon Ubeda. There’s the cunning suggestion – which remains pretty much unexplored – that the family’s obvious wealth might itself be part of the problem, with unlimited funds to throw at Marga’s issues.

Strong performances from the central trio are at the film’s core. Playing the quietly tyrannical, egotistical Marga as someone whose inner demons are essentially incommunicable – particularly during one toe-curling Christmas meal sequence at which everyone dutifully drinks water – Suarez is at her best when she’s alone, with Marga voicing her actions in a strategy that’s presumably part of her rehab. But the downside to this is that there’s unfortunately little more to the character of Marga than her addiction.

The always watchable Grandinetti – another Almodovar veteran - gives it his best shot, but the script categorises Felix early on as another one of those men who are well-intentioned and caring, but also useless. Somewhat implausibly, Felix is jettisoned for the second half of the film. 

Molina, an under-appreciated actor with a history of strong performances as women who keep their sufferings under wraps, makes Blanca the most complex character as she struggles towards the tough realisation that true escape with not come from dancing, but in taking control of her relationship with Marga. To this extent, Dismantling An Elephant can feel like a slight variation on any number of films in which a child struggles to gain independence from a parent.