A HOUSE ON FIRE

A House on Fire is a tragicomedy, a sufficiently personal story and this will take time, an enriching path that I have not yet been able to enjoy in my other projects. It is a tragedy for our protagonist, a mother who, at 60 years old, feels lost, unappreciated, unloved and abandoned. Alone. This is, without a doubt, a great tragedy. It is also a drama about a woman who, as she enters old age, sees how each of the members of her small family has created his own path: the son with a girlfriend, the daughter with her children, her ex-husband with a new relationship? Everyone has moved on with their lives during this time and have learned to function independently, outside the family nucleus, a nucleus where the mother was once the center. Now the mother has been left alone, being the center... but no one revolves around her anymore. Before, when she occupied that position, she knew how to educate her children emotionally, manage and empower their concerns and insecurities. She was the center because thanks to her there was always a plan every weekend, a movie to see, a place to go. She was the center because even though she did not provide financial support like her husband, she provided a home. She was the center because to be the center required giving up almost everything else: a professional future, personal time, etc. Giving up almost everything else clashed with running a family.

But suddenly, the mother wants to go back to what she was. To reclaim what the years have taken away. To be again an emotional support for her son, to guide her daughter and to share moments with her (ex-) husband. The mother wants to regain, at any cost, her family. And here the comedy part is born. Comedy because we will see the desperation and almost pathetic manipulation of a mother who, entering the “I have nothing to lose”, will do anything to rebuild a family that little by little, and in an unconscious way, has been abandoned. One day the children leave home another day it becomes clear to you that continuing to live with that man, who is more of a roommate than anything else, doesn’t make much sense. And little by little the phone calls become anecdotal, the weekends are long, and the mornings are almost no reason to get up. Perhaps Montse should not have had to give up her “identity,” which was made up of work, private passions, and, in short, anything that had nothing to do with “her own.” But this was not the case. She, without knowing that she was making the decision, threw herself fully into making her family happy.

And all so that now she finds herself demanding a little attention, a little appreciation. She is demanding something that she created and now she is missing: A FAMILY. And if to get it back she must destroy everything to start from scratch, she is willing to do it. Whether it’s talking too much, meddling where she’s not wanted, manipulating or finally... destroying the most representative image of this family: the summer house they bought on the Costa Brava to be happier than they already were. That said, A House on Fire is still a film about the “darker” side of families. Of all that is kept silent, of what is not said and of the less tender and more selfish part that we all have with the people we love the most. All from a naturalistic approach but with a sense of humor, approaching us to a certain pathos of a family that has forgotten a little how to be a family.