Saint John’s Eve provides the backdrop for Basque director Ion de Sosa's Balearic, which screens tomorrow at the BFI London Film Festival. La Noche de San Juan, as it's known in Spain, is a midsummer celebration held on the night of 23rd June. It has arcane roots, fusing ancient pagan sun rituals that pay homage to the year's longest day with Christian traditions marking the birth of Saint John the Baptist. Saint John’s Eve is especially popular in coastal areas, where revellers gather to light huge bonfires symbolising purification, prior to bathing in the sea, which represents both Jesus' baptism and the concept of renewal.
Balearic gets off to a strong start as four teenagers—three girls and one boy—wander into the grounds of an isolated, seemingly unoccupied mansion. After some casual chatter, the group decide to take a dip in the villa’s pool, but their fun is cut short when three vicious guard dogs appear. One of the girls, who happens to be out of the water when the dogs arrive, is savagely attacked and suffers severe injuries. Although her friends manage to drag her back into the pool, the dogs—curiously unwilling to enter the water—block all available exits, leaving the teens stranded and terrified as one of them slowly bleeds out.
As we're waiting to see how the situation is resolved, the film abruptly cuts to another villa, seemingly not far from the first, where a group of adult friends have gathered to mark the holiday by eating, drinking, and talking. These people—for whom the label "idle rich" seems wholly appropriate—appear curiously detached from the outside world and strangely indifferent to a wildfire that has started in a nearby forest; one surreal scene shows a firefighting helicopter replenishing its supplies by scooping water from the pool around which these partygoers are sitting. Alas, if only it had visited another house to do this.
De Sosa's emphasis on both fire and water—two elements that feature so prominently in Saint John's Eve celebrations—forms the foundation of a social critique in which one generation sits pretty while the next is, quite literally, left to the dogs. This is an intelligent, risky piece of filmmaking, one in which the bold decision to move from the teens' ordeal to something much more diffuse and elusive—the poolside scenes featuring the adults feel almost loose-limbed—might alienate some. But this nagging, unsettling work, superbly shot on tactile 16mm by Cristina Neira, retains a peculiar grip throughout its brief running time.
