It is difficult to make an objective assessment of this movie taking into account the strong criticism of the Opus cult that underlies the movie.
Camino is a fictionalized biography of Alexia Gonzalez Barros, a teeneger who died in 1985 after a short but painful illness. The director changes the main issue of the movie: the love that the real Alexia felt for Jesus is turned into a love for a real kid called Jesus (a common name in Spain). Is that mockery? It's difficult to say. Fesser transforms the love for a heavenly Jesus for a down-to-earth love for a kid. Nobody in the movie notices this except the father. I can understand the family didn't like the idea and, if as the director says, this is not a movie based in her story, to say at the beginning that the movie is based in real facts and to dedicate the movie to Alexia is misleading and, I fear, marketing oriented.
Having said that, if you watch the film as it is, forgetting the facts that could support part of the movie, you will probably like it. Camino, the main character, is extremely well played and you cannot feel but strong sympathy for her. The narrative discourse of the movie, however, it is sometimes too affected by the continuous dreams of the girl, that at time are almost ridiculous in their cinematography.
On the other hand, the movie is a good portrait of how the Opus works. Its sexism, its demand for obedience above all, its cult and sect ways of working at taking people from their families, that is portrayed honestly. The Opus characters, however, are mostly unidimensional, which makes them less believable.
All in all, a good movie difficult to forget, not a masterpiece, with very good acting, that would have been better without marketing allusions to a real character that has little to do with the portrayed one. It is a film about love, a religious love that the director and writer makes terrestial.
Camino is a fictionalized biography of Alexia Gonzalez Barros, a teeneger who died in 1985 after a short but painful illness. The director changes the main issue of the movie: the love that the real Alexia felt for Jesus is turned into a love for a real kid called Jesus (a common name in Spain). Is that mockery? It's difficult to say. Fesser transforms the love for a heavenly Jesus for a down-to-earth love for a kid. Nobody in the movie notices this except the father. I can understand the family didn't like the idea and, if as the director says, this is not a movie based in her story, to say at the beginning that the movie is based in real facts and to dedicate the movie to Alexia is misleading and, I fear, marketing oriented.
Having said that, if you watch the film as it is, forgetting the facts that could support part of the movie, you will probably like it. Camino, the main character, is extremely well played and you cannot feel but strong sympathy for her. The narrative discourse of the movie, however, it is sometimes too affected by the continuous dreams of the girl, that at time are almost ridiculous in their cinematography.
On the other hand, the movie is a good portrait of how the Opus works. Its sexism, its demand for obedience above all, its cult and sect ways of working at taking people from their families, that is portrayed honestly. The Opus characters, however, are mostly unidimensional, which makes them less believable.
All in all, a good movie difficult to forget, not a masterpiece, with very good acting, that would have been better without marketing allusions to a real character that has little to do with the portrayed one. It is a film about love, a religious love that the director and writer makes terrestial.
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