‘The Girls Are Alright’: Karlovy Vary Review

Dir/scr: Itsaso Arana. Spain. 2023. 85mins

Four actresses and a female playwright spend a week at a creative retreat in the Spanish countryside. They are there to workshop a new play, but this is a languid, leisurely rehearsal process, with plenty of time built in for campfire confidences recounting fairy tales and romantic adventures and simply lolling around photogenically in the summer sun, occasionally wearing crinolines. The debut film from actress Itsaso Arana (who writes, directs and stars), is a wisp of a thing that defies easy categorisation, blending fiction and documentary, comedy and drama. It’s a picture of such gauzy delicacy that we don’t immediately notice the grace with which it handles its weightier themes. Beguiling, tactile and intimate, it is a delightful film that revels in its femininity.

A film that is particularly attuned to the physical intimacies of female friendship

Arana returns to Karlovy Vary, where the film screens in the main competition, having co-written and starred in August Virgin which played in the festival in 2019. Here, she, like the other actors, plays herself – or at least a version of herself. The cast includes relative unknowns Itziar Manero and Helena Ezquerro (playing Itziar and Helena respectively) and more established names Barbara Lennie (Sunday’s Illness, Everybody Knows) and Goya-winner Irene Escolar (An Autumn Without Berlin), playing characters named Barbara and Irene.

This blurring of the line between reality and fiction is just one of the film’s playful flirtations with meta layering and self awareness. The presence of Lennie and Escolar won’t hurt the film’s prospects on the festival circuit and perhaps with a niche arthouse distributor. But the main selling point is likely to be word of mouth from audiences charmed by the picture’s gentle magic.

A key crew largely composed of women reinforces the female energy on screen. This is, not surprisingly, a film that is particularly attuned to the physical intimacies of female friendship. There’s a lovely, revealing detail at the start involving Barbara, who is pregnant both as a character and in real life, and Irene, who are sharing one of the rooms in the pleasingly rustic house. It’s immediately clear that they are the closest of friends, in part from the ease of their conversation – Irene is to be the baby’s godmother. There is a moment in which Irene reaches over and affectionately squeezes her friend’s breast; it’s a throwaway, thoughtless gesture – Barbara swats her away with a laugh – but it tells us so much about the friendship. Women who are comfortable enough to honk each other’s breasts are unlikely to keep many secrets from one another.

Meanwhile, in the room next door, the two younger actresses, Itziar and Helena, are performing the awkward dance of breaking the ice while processing the realisation that they will be expected to share a bed.

There’s a floating, freewheeling sense to the storytelling – it feels like a film that was explored and discovered rather than rigorously shaped and scripted. Barbara’s pregnancy is an anchor, with the promise of the future and themes of nurture and motherhood woven through the film. The baby, says Mercedes (the owner of the house, both in the film and in real life), will be a girl. And she will need a “brave, important name.”

But death and grief are also recurring subjects, with several of the characters sharing their experiences of losing parents at an early age. All this is woven together with a hint of magic; a four poster bed, which is hauled by the women to various locations around the grounds, a toad named Felipe and the fairytale of the princess and the pea.