On The Fringe (En Los Márgenes)

Set over a day with four intertwining stories On The Fringe has Azucena (Penélope Cruz) as a mother and wife awaiting eviction from her flat, with Rafa (Luis Tosar), a lawyer who’s helping her while at the same time tracking down Badia (Somaya Taoufiki) the mother of a child who has been taken into care.

At the shop where Azucena works there’s Teodora (Adelfa Calvo) shopping and desperate to get hold of her son German (Font García), who’s picking up casual poorly paid work, and not answering his mother’s calls. He just happens to be working with Manuel (Juan Diego Botto who is debuting as director and co-writer with Olga Rodriguez) who is Azucena’s husband.

Its contrived but a solid method to get the viewer involved with both the social and human issues tackled in the film. As Azucena battles banks and bureaucracy to try and stop her eviction, with pressure at work the threat of being laid off by an unsympathetic employer. So Rafa has to deal with hard pressed social services to help the girl and find her mother, as well as handle his sod of a stepson Raul (Christian Checa) and support his wife Helena (Aixa Villagrán).

German’s business has collapsed and he’s too embarrassed to talk to his mother having spun a web of lies about his job, she too is facing eviction. It’s on this job that he gets talking to Manuel who dishes out barroom wisdom, while at home he’s little more than a negative loser in a scene with Cruz who gives an astonishing performance and not prepared to give up despite the odds stacked against her.

Writers, director and actors are all on top form here lending the film an element of documentary though it is clearly a film. And they certainly pull on the emotions as the film moves towards a conclusion that is bleak offering no answers but a glint of optimism.
The evictions are clearly an emotive issue in Spain though not exclusive, that they link in with the pressures of work and social services will give this film a broader appeal.

This is not a subtle film with banks and big business the clear targets and a polemical scene midway where people at a meeting are given free rein to explain their situation, most of them women. Nevertheless the author intrusion is generally well controlled as the various threads are brought together.

The overwhelming impression from this film is that a section of Spanish society is under remorseless daily pressure with little respite in a system that that appear to be close to collapse.

On the Fringe had its UK debut at the Glasgow Film Festival.