Red Moon Tide review – sea spirits haunt the Spanish coast

A fishing community is frozen in time after the disappearance of a local hero in this unsettling and austerely poetic tale

The strange and striking landscapes of coastal Galicia in northwest Spain are the backdrop to this beguiling landscape film, less a conventional narrative and more a haunting prose piece, tying together ancient superstitions with fears of a coming environmental apocalypse.

The central story concerns the disappearance of a local fisherman, Rubio, who believed a sea monster was responsible for the community’s dwindling catch and set out to hunt it down. Rubio is something of a local hero who, we are told, has saved more than 40 people from drowning. In his absence, the town almost literally comes to a standstill. His story is recounted in voiceover by various townsfolk, whom we see standing stock still in the landscape, as if frozen in time.

The entire film is told in this fashion. There are no conventional scenes or dialogue, only voiceover and occasional intertitles. Visually it is a series of static or slightly mobile tableaux, often evocative and meticulously composed – somewhere between Andrei Tarkovsky and photographer Andreas Gursky. There are wide, open landscapes, plains, woodlands, mysteriously shaped rocks, moonlit seas (the lunar cycle is implicated in the sea monster’s arrival). There are austere interiors so still the livestock now wander through them.

Some of the imagery plays tricks with scale: what appears at first to be water running down a wall turns out to be a vast concrete dam. The soundtrack is full of moaning and wailing and keening of monsters of the deep, and occasionally the squelching footsteps of an invisible walker – presumably the spirit of Rubio. Providing some narrative impetus are three witches who arrive to help look for Rubio. They drape the static townsfolk in white sheets, like ghosts.

The trance-like pacing and mystical meditation might frustrate viewers looking for an easy watch, but local film-maker Lois Patiño is clearly operating at the fine-art end of the cinema scale. He applies his distinctive mode to a story that’s both ravishing and unsettling.

• Red Moon Tide is available on 20 April on Mubi.

Contributor

Steve Rose

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
The Offering review – a sizzling Hitchcockian love triangle
A psychologist is forced to confront the fallout of a past romance in a neo-noir from Ventura Durall lacking visual punch

Phil Hoad

27, Jul, 2021 @9:00 AM

Article image
Alcarràs review – heartbreak and ruin in the Catalan heat
Carla Simón’s award-winning story of a peach farmer struggling to make ends meet asks many important questions about our relationship with the land and the human cost of progress

Peter Bradshaw

03, Jan, 2023 @7:00 AM

Article image
Elisa y Marcela review – same-sex marriage drained of passion
Isabel Coixet transforms the real-life story of two Spanish women who married in 1901 into a bafflingly joyless affair

Peter Bradshaw

14, Feb, 2019 @9:47 AM

Article image
Parallel Mothers review – Almodóvar delivers Venice film festival a little bundle of joy
Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz open the festival with a boisterous, warm-bodied swapped-at-birth melodrama about two single women who meet in a maternity ward

Xan Brooks

01, Sep, 2021 @5:00 PM

Article image
Close Your Eyes review – Victor Erice returns with enigmatic tale of disappeared actor
The Spirit of the Beehive director’s first feature in 30 years uses a film-within-a-film structure to ruminate on memory, ageing and cinema itself

Peter Bradshaw

25, May, 2023 @7:02 AM

Article image
The Beasts review – unsettling rural noir is a Euro-arthouse twist on Straw Dogs
Middle-class incomers to a remote village in Spain’s ‘wild west’ expose fear, resentment and nationalism in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s disturbing true-crime drama

Peter Bradshaw

22, Mar, 2023 @9:00 AM

Article image
The Candidate review – corruption and paranoia at the Spanish seaside
Antonio de la Torre is magnetic as a politician at the centre of a web of betrayal in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s slow-burn thriller

Leslie Felperin

01, Aug, 2019 @2:00 PM

Article image
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles review – animated odyssey
Film-maker Luis Buñuel’s surreal journey to a deprived region of Spain in the 30s is recreated in a gently engaging animation

Peter Bradshaw

16, Jul, 2020 @2:00 PM

Article image
Parallel Mothers review | Peter Bradshaw's film of the week
Pedro Almodóvar’s poetic conviction and creative fluidity flow through this moving baby-swap drama about two single mothers and buried secrets from the Spanish civil war

Peter Bradshaw

27, Jan, 2022 @7:00 AM

Article image
Moon, 66 Questions review – elusive but rewarding study of family tension
Jacqueline Lentzou’s highly anticipated debut feature follows a daughter struggling to reconnect with her ailing father

Peter Bradshaw

20, Jun, 2022 @10:00 AM