We’re officially into spring now, a time when even lifelong city-dwellers like me start entertaining bucolic thoughts. Pleasing as it is to see daffodils blooming in a London park, the seasonal rewards of new life and renewed warmth are always best illustrated in a farming environment.
Which isn’t to over-romanticise the farming world: Spanish director Carla Simón’s lovely Alcarràs (2022; now streaming on Mubi and coming to DVD on Monday) certainly doesn’t. Earthy and angry, this portrait of a Catalan peach-farming family being forced off the land they’ve held for generations captures the occasional, elemental rewards of agricultural life, but also its punishing grind – and thus fits into a rich tradition of films where the dramatic stakes, tensions and catharses all derive from the unpredictability of living off the land.
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