Little Loves

Teresa (María Vázquez) is compelled to change her holiday plans to help her proudly independent mother (Adriana Ozores), who has had a fall while attempting to paint her house. Mother and daughter will spend a stifling summer together, unable to agree on even the most trivial things. However, despite their resentments, guilt and pettiness, forced coexistence will ultimately facilitate deeper connections.

This is Celia Rico’s second feature, and like her first, Journey to a Mother’s Room, it reveals women’s inner lives with empathy and grace.

An honest and beautiful portrait of the family as an ambiguous place of security, but also of vulnerability, of the mother-daughter relaionship as a kind of unresolved tension between that unchosen love that is expected to be unconditional and the bond that it implies. What is interesting about the film is how it manages to reach this depth and achieve the tone it seeks from an inner gaze… Through the meticulousness of detail, through everyday glances and gestures, through silence, absences, through what is not said more than what is said.

Julia Olmo, Cineuropa

Quiet, understated and driven by two fine performances, and similarly underpinned by the director’s ability to extract meaning and nuance from the apparently insignificant, this is extremely relatable, low-key drama.

Jonathan Holland, Screen International

Flawless performances… Dazzling.

El Mundo

Pierces the heart — and how!

Paula Aranzazu Ruiz, Cinemania