There’s something transformative about the summer holidays. Those long, relaxed weeks released from the constraints and expectations of school offer the promise of reinvention, of hitherto undreamed of freedoms. The blank slate of vacation friendships, forged in the moment, with no historical baggage to drag along, gives a chance to start again. It’s no coincidence that so many coming-of-age films unfold against the languid backdrop of an endless childhood summer. But for some kids, that sense of release brings with it its own particular stresses and anxieties. 20,000 Species of Bees, the assured feature debut from Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren joins pictures such as Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy and Carla Simón’s Summer 1993 (both films that, for different reasons, share a close kinship with this one) in using summer as the foundation for a story of a child struggling to find their place in a world that doesn’t quite know what to make of them.
The child at the centre of this lovely, heartfelt drama is an eight-year-old (a remarkable turn from Sofía Otero, winner of the prize for best leading performance at the 2023 Berlin film festival), who, throughout a summer spent with her mother’s family in the Basque Country, begins to assert what she knows to be true: that she is a girl, and that the family and friends who refer to her as a boy are wrong. It’s not an easy process. The summer, with its expectations of bathing suits and bare flesh, can be a mortifying time for a child who is uncomfortable in their own body. And, in a close-knit rural community, everyone knows your name – a constant, stinging reminder if that name no longer fits with who you know yourself to be. Rejecting her birth name, Aitor, and the gender-neutral nickname of Cocó, she finally settles on Lucía.
There’s a beguiling delicacy and emotional acuity to Urresola’s directing approach. Handheld cameras pick up on the tiniest of details – the flicker of a smile that lights Lucía’s face when she is complimented as a girl; the cloud that darkens her expression when her grandmother forcibly asserts that she has a grandson, not a granddaughter. Meanwhile, Lucía’s mother, Ane (Patricia López Arnaiz), is struggling with her own identity. An aspiring sculptor, she is perennially in the shadow of her late father, whose imposing work and reputation dominates the studio space where Ane attempts to carve a niche in the art world. As with L’immensità, Emanuele Crialese’s semi-autobiographical portrait of transgender childhood, it is the mother who attempts to provide the emotional insulation and support needed for her child to be themselves, adding tension to an already fractured marriage.
Deft, understated and with a refreshing lightness of touch, this is the kind of naturalistic, documentary-inspired film-making approach that frequently draws comparisons with the cinema of the Dardennes brothers. But in fact it’s closer in tone to the fresh, vital energy of Simón’s work, with a touch of the earth magic and ritual superstitions that infuse the films of Alice Rohrwacher, in particular The Wonders, a picture that has its own symbolic relationship with bees.
The bees, and the beekeeper, Lucía’s great-aunt Lourdes (Ane Gabarain), play a crucial role in Lucía’s journey. The guarded, sullen child we first meet blossoms in the company of an adult who listens, without judging or correcting, when Lucía talks about herself as a girl. Not everyone is as accepting: Lucía’s grandmother Lita (Itziar Lazkano) feels that the child is acting out and has been overly indulged, something she lists alongside a whole litany of criticisms of her daughter during a superb, searing scene in which a lifetime of half-healed family grudges are picked raw.
And Lucía’s grandmother is unlikely to be the only person who will push back against the idea of an eight-year-old questioning their gender identity. It’s the most scalding of hot-button topics and a brave choice for a debut film. But with this gentle, empathic picture, Urresola joins a conversation that usually plays out as a screaming match, and tones it down to a murmur. It turns out that you hear a lot more that way.
In cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema
