12/03/2024 - Liliana Torres’ newest feature tackles forms of everyday duress that women face while confronted with the societal expectation to become a mother

By using the feminine form of the word for “mammal” as its title, Catalonian filmmaker Liliana Torres’ gives her third fiction feature, Mamífera, some extra voltage of sociopolitical charge with her exploration of female bodily and reproductive autonomy. Without fanfare, the writer-director charts out a measured tale whose protagonist faces a constant barrage of everyday pressures around the gendered burden of childbearing. As the third instalment in Torres’ autobiographical trilogy on relationships and family, the Catalan-language film just had its world premiere in the Narrative Feature Competition of this year’s SXSW.

40-year-old Lola (Maria Rodríguez Soto) seems to have it all: a comfortable job as an art professor, a loving relationship with her partner Bruno (Enric Auquer), and a supportive group of women friends (among them Ruth Llopis, Anna Alarcón, María Ribera, and Anna Bertran). She savours every moment until her upset stomach turns out to be week ten of an unplanned pregnancy, which she quickly seeks to abort, supported by Bruno. The bulk of the film then takes place over an emotionally tumultuous three days, a period mandated by a Spanish law (defunct as of 2022) requiring women to take 72 hours to consider the decision before being able to terminate their pregnancy.

Embedded within Mamífera is a powerful sense of weighty realism, with Torres’ reflective story captured by DOP Lucía C. Pan’s calm camerawork. The film reveals how an unplanned pregnancy can throw women (and anyone with a uterus) into disarray as there are so few support structures in place, and any extant structures are usually designed to coerce women into becoming mothers. Suddenly, Lola’s forever steadfast motivation to never have children is placed under a spotlight, even by those closest to her — and many of her same-aged friends are either mothers or hoping to be mothers.

Most unique to the film are sequences of original collages by María José Garcés Larrain, which appear as Lola’s dreams — or more rightly stated, nightmares. Sometimes, they interject too intrusively into the story, but they nonetheless contribute to the work’s creative charm. In these short scenes, Lola is dressed in mid-century-inspired clothing (costume design by Désirée Guirao) and thrust into worlds where women spit up food for hatchling birds and babies hurtle down conveyor belts. The collages are designed to emulate Lola’s own artistic style, which the viewer is introduced to at the beginning of the film: she snips images of people from magazines and inventively pastes them together. In one such imagination, she cuts out the pregnant belly of a woman from a parenting magazine and superimposes it on a photo of herself.

With original music by Joan Pons Villaró, the guitar-driven score — sometimes gentle picking, other times more a strummed indie rock — proposes an undercurrent of tension within a life of easy living, while production designer Xènia Besora provides rich texture for scenes of the characters’ always cluttered yet welcoming flats. The film is further bolstered by a strong supporting performance by Auquer as Lola’s partner, who acts as a generous and peaceful counterweight to Lola’s mind steeped in three days of turmoil until he realises that he may, in fact, want to be a father.

Throughout Mamífera, Lola never loses sight of her agency, something that cannot be taken for granted today. The film’s greatest strength is that Torres adopts a serious tone instead of spinning the story into a more conventional dramedy with larger laughs, offering viewers the chance to carefully consider Lola’s plight at every turn (and perhaps even in relation to their own lives). The film needs a few minutes to find its rhythm and tone — but when it does, it sticks the landing.

Mamífera is a Spanish production by Distinto Films and Edna Cinema. International sales are managed by US’ Visit Films.