Title: Camino
Director: Javier Fesser
Genre: Drama
Country of Origin: Spain
Year: 2008
Rating: None
Time: 138 minutes
Grade: ★★★
Camino is the 2008 Spanish film based on the story of Alexia González-Barros, a young girl who battled with spinal cancer and is currently on the process of canonization. Starring Nerea Camacho as Camino, a deeply religious girl who suffers from spinal cancer and the effects it has on her family and her faith.
The two main themes of the film is first love and religion. Camino goes to a private Catholic school and her family is involved in Opus Dei, a Catholic organization. Despite trying her best to live an ordinary life of a teenager, Camino is unable to do much when she begins to suffer from the cancer that takes a bit of her life each time. The only thing that keeps her forward is her crush on a boy named Jesus which her religious mother mistakes as her proclamation of love towards Jesus Christ. The film divulges on irony of Catholicism and borderlines on how far religion can go in times of tragedy.
While the film starts of slow and tedious, it gradually gets more heart-wrenching and even philosophical about the belief of God. Playing with the trope of magical realism, the otherwise tragedy of cancer is complimented with child-like fantasy in the form of dreams which Camino uses to escape the pain of cancer. It can touch many people from parents to even children about the faith of a young girl who accepts death with the remorse that all the things she will never go through. The depth of the film itself is amazing; the theme of faith itself can be determined the viewers as either irony or sincere. There will be at times that you may want to rip your hair out of frustration of faith (even as one who is Catholic herself, there were times I wanted to scream), if you're able to get past that, it's an enjoyable film.
