A House on Fire

Montse has been waiting for this weekend for a long time. Divorced for years, with two grown-up children who mostly ignore her, she has gathered the whole family at the family house in Cadaqués on the Costa Brava, full of summer memories. Her son is coming, and her daughter, and their partners, and even her ex-husband with his new girlfriend. Montse has planned everything. This weekend is going to be perfect, whether anyone else wants it or not. Even if she has to burn the whole thing down to get there.

Dani de la Orden directs from a sharp, very funny script by Eduard Sola, and the film is a black comedy about the Catalan bourgeois family that keeps getting darker and funnier at the same time. Emma Vilarasau is magnificent as Montse, a mother who smiles through every humiliation and keeps a list of every one of them. Her timing is perfect, and behind the comedy there is a woman so lonely that it hurts to watch. Enric Auquer, María Rodríguez Soto, Alberto San Juan and Clara Segura complete an ensemble where everyone has a grievance and nobody listens.

It is a film about mothers who gave everything and children who never noticed, about family homes and the resentments stored inside them, and about the point where politeness finally explodes. The last act is chaos in the best way. It became the most-watched Catalan-language film of the decade in Catalonia, and it is easy to see why. Funny, cruel and moving. A must see.