You would be hard pressed to find humour in a film whose central theme deals with child mortality but Javier Fesser’s Camino is a rare thing indeed. Though respectful and subdued when the story requires, Fesser’s ironic touch manages to extract humour from a dire situation and in the process, skewer organised religion and its propagation of false hope.
Camino is loosely based on the life of 14-year-old Alexia Gonzalez-Barros, who demonstrated extraordinary resilience in the face of death, and who is now in the process of being canonised.
The film opens to a sombre setting: a crowded hospital room in which the 11-year-old Camino is dying in the presence of her family and several priests, physicians and interns, who spill out into the corridor. As she takes her last breaths, the young girl demonstrates a spirited and unwavering devotion to Jesus, thus proving herself to be a bastion of hope and inspiration to those who bid her farewell.
From such gloomy beginnings the rest of the film is told in flashback, and we encounter Camino as a healthy and vibrant tween, with a penchant for drama and a burning crush on her best friend’s cousin. Rumour has it that the boy likes her too, but Camino is loath to trust the playground rumour mill, particularly when she spies a bratty rival making a bold play for her man. With her doe eyes and flaming hair, Camino (Nerea Camacho) wouldn’t be out of place in a Disney animation, and Fesser solidifies the link with a series of lavish dream sequences, complete with wind machines and a string section, which celebrate Camino’s infatuation.
At home, however, things are decidedly different. Camino's mother is a humourless member of the Opus Dei, who believes that life is a rare and fleeting gift, and she spends the bulk of her waking moments giving thanks and praise to Jesus. She demands the same devotion of her daughters and has successfully convinced Camino’s older sister to abandon a brief stint of teen rebellion and embark on her novitiate. Camino’s whimsies aren’t welcome at home but a cute plot point enables her to indulge her fantasies: When your crush shares his name with a certain Son of God, your fundamentalist Catholic mother’s demands become much easier to tolerate.
When Camino begins to complain of back aches, the narrative takes its inevitable turn, albeit after a lengthy series of misdiagnoses. Camino’s mother steadfastly refuses to indulge in negative emotions, and insists that the family see the silver lining inherent in the situation: Camino’s cancer is a test of the family’s faith, she says, and they ought to feel honoured to have been singled out by the Lord. Unfortunately, poor Camino’s father doesn’t share his wife’s enthusiasm, and his grief at his daughter’s impending death is compounded by frustration at his wife’s blind faith/denial.
As her condition deteriorates, Camino’s efforts to see her beloved Jesus one last time set off a chain of events that inform the bedside vigil with an entirely new perspective.
Fesser is unrelenting in exposing the contradiction and hypocrisy inherent in organised religion but he also wisely avoids shooting fish in a barrel. There’s an overwhelming reverence to this outrageously melodramatic piece that suggests Fesser is hedging his bets. He’s not criticising those whose faith provides comfort in times of crisis; only those who would seek to profit from that crisis and turn a young girl’s death into a PR vehicle for the Church.
