Violence and fear in a small Spanish village

The enemy is on my side ★★★
Drama (2022)
Director: Rodrigo Sorogoyen
Starring: Denis Minocet, Marina Foa

Always politically and socially anxious, Rodrigo Sorogoyen (“The Fallen One”) returns with a highly charged film, also the recipient of 9 Goya Awards.

Antoine and Olga, a middle-aged couple from France, move to a small village in Galicia, Spain, to live as farmers. They sell their products at the local folk market, renovate dilapidated houses and learn the local dialect so that they can communicate more easily with the locals.

However, the latter will turn against them when they refuse to agree to establish a wind farm in the area. Now, mainly led by two brothers, threats and attacks against the couple will begin, with the forgiveness of the local authorities.

A middle-aged couple from France, who have moved to the area and live off the land, anger the locals when they don’t agree to build a wind farm.

Sorogoyen uses a true story to talk about small forgotten communities, and the conflict between humanity and self-interest, but mainly about the rage with which someone turns against his fellow, when he feels his “sovereignty” is threatened.

Living and growing in isolation – not all of them – the local villagers are suspicious of the cosmopolitan aliens who come to disturb their peace and the prospect of easy profit from wind turbines.

The main problem here is communication and it involves much more than any language barriers. Blind xenophobia and conservatism, which eventually became “the enemy next to me.”

Home as a struggle. Both main axes of the story: violence and fear.

The violence of the environment, the violence of the brothers towards the spouses, the violence of the village that wants to expel the stranger, what does not belong to the village organically. And the couple’s fear for their future, their fear when they return home, and the woman’s fear every time her husband is late coming home,” says Sorogoen.

He chose to divide his film roughly into two parts: the first from the perspective of a man and the second from that of his wife, with the story developing linearly.

The excellent performances by both actors (Denni Minochet, Marina Fouz) help bring out the nuances between them, as well as the overall emotional weight, which will ultimately prove crucial to the emotional denouement.