‘The Rye Horn’: San Sebastian Review

Dir/scr. Jaione Camborda. Spain/Portugal/Belgium 2023. 103 mins.

The rye horn, or ergot of rye, is poisonous to humans. It was once employed by midwives to induce labour - and to bring about an abortion. In 1971 Galicia, in the waterbound Isla de Arousa, it is used by local woman Maria (the dancer Janet Novas) with devastating effects in Jaione Camborda’s elemental second feature The Rye Horn, which has won the Golden Shell at San Sebastian after competing in Toronto’s Platform. It may be a generalisation to sweep this earthy film into concurrent works by northern Spanish filmmakers Carla Simon, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren or Clara Roquet, but it will do this intensely female drama no harm when it comes to attracting further audiences.

 The Rye Horn feels as if it was sucked from the earth

Camborda, who wrote the screenplay, has something primal on her mind on her mind from the film’s very first moments: The Rye Horn feels as if it was sucked from the earth. It starts boldly with a 10-minute up-close look at the final stages of labour, something portrayed with an uneasy mix of physicality, even sensuality, and pure pain. Carmen’s baby is born under the watchful eyes of Maria and her own teenage daughter, the wide-eyed Luisa (Carla Rivas, another actor who makes a strong physical impression). We are told that this is Galicia in 1971, no more: so we will have to assume that in Franco-era Galicia, a poor place marginalised by the prevailing nationalist theocracy, being a single woman (Maria) or having an unwanted teenage pregnancy (Luisa) are equally dangerous. 

When her fisherman father sees a love bite on her neck, he tells Luisa ‘you’re playing with fire’ - athletic and independent, she has a trial with a Vigo team on the mainland and if they pick her, she’ll go, leaving her boyfriend behind. That’s going to be impossible if she’s pregnant, and, three months along, she goes to Maria for help. The fire is about to become real, in the film’s second outstanding sequence — in which entertainers from Santiago  arrive for a village festival in this mussel-picking community, and Maria crosses several lines which will come to affect her greatly in the film’s second half.

The Rye Horn’s focus is on femininity and the earth: the primal urge to suckle at a woman’s breast is a repeated motif, as is imagery of dirt and sex bound up together, or drops of women’s blood which fall silently. From the mussel pickers to potato digging, the salty sea to the river that marks a boundary between Franco’s Guardia Civil and Caetano’s Portugal, it’s a beautiful fillm, but in a functional manner and not fetishised. Even the soundtrack is clipped - to good effect - until it is finally left loose to soar. In her first film, the Galician dancer and choreographer Janet Novas is mostly silent - a free spirit, a quiet observer, and a woman of intense physicality. The Rye Horn grows progressively darker, in tone and subject matter and look, until Maria visits the rye fields again, and life comes full circle.

Maria never explains herself in this multi-lingual film. The most we can glean is that she has no children, bears a scar on her stomach, and once performed an abortion on herself with a coat-hanger. The rest is up to the viewer to decide, although Camborda is quite clear that Maria should not be judged for any mistakes that she makes. She will both pay her price without complaint and find her way, silently, with a watchful air, drinking everything in.

Although it has been crowned with the Golden Shell by a San Sebastián jury headed by Claire Denis, The Rye Horn is less generally accessible than those films made recently by Camborda’s compatriots: it’s more of a pure essence of a story than a distillation of events. Like Maria, though, it will find support, particularly on high-end streaming. It’s a fertile ground for female audiences, in particular - like Northern Spain itself, once cast aside during the timeframe these directors are addressing, and now to the forefront of a brilliant new wave.