European Films

El 7º día (The 7th Day) is not so much a film that explains as it is a film that observes. In this respect, it acts like the inhabitants of the village it portrays: a rural village in the North of Spain were codes of family honour rather than common sense dictate one’s behaviour and where bloody fights ensue because people expect them to happen. The story of two feuding families as written by screenwriter Ray Loriga, is one of family rancour more than family honour and is, sadly, based on a true story. 

Everything started as a story of adolescent love, but soon things spiral out of control and the poor boy dies, stabbed by a family member of the girl. The girl grows up to be Luciana (Victoria Abril) and her family is made to pay for their actions by the family of the boy when the house of Luciana's family is burnt down, with their mother still inside. The family moves to a village nearby to avoid direct contact with the other family headed by José (José Garcia), who feels the two families are even now. Luciana, who has now lost her lover and her mother, does not agree and the gloomy woman, now in her forties and still clinging to her virginally white wedding dress, broods on the possibility of revenge.

The events, narrated by the oldest of the three daughters of José called Isabel (Yohana Cobo), unfold in a way that is both shocking and normal if one is aware of the codes of honour observed by many families around the Mediterranean basin and in South America up until this day. In fact, one is reminded of García Marquez’s exquisite novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold in which the protagonists are also aware that what is expected of them is to kill their opponent because of family honour. In García's tale, however, the protagonists hope that by telling everyone what they will do and when they will do it, someone might have the common sense to stop them before it is too late. The inhabitants of the village in director Carlos Saura’s tale do not have their sense of reason appealing to them to that extent, though the father of Luciana is clearly hesitant. He knows what his daughter wants and he knows that according to the fabric of their lives and the traditions of the land, she is neither mad for wanting it, nor crazy for expecting it to happen sooner rather than later.

Saura uses the timelessness of the story to great effect in his settings. He switches between the houses, the church and the fields surrounding them that have remained unchanged for generations on the one hand and the modern settings such as a supermarket, a prison or the interior of a car on the other as if the same story happened to different generations in the same way. The screenplay does not try to understand and explain its characters because the characters themselves would not expect the need to be explained to anyone.

What is important in this story is not our attachment to the characters but our observations and feelings about their radical behaviour. Violence as a result of a blood feud, however archaic this may seem to our eyes, does still happen. As such El 7º día offers an interesting, well-filmed and well-acted slice of violent realism that is infused with a timelessness that makes us understand why it will be hard to eradicate such behaviour even in modern times.

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