Andrea Bagney’s directorial debut Ramona is a love letter to rom-coms and other classic romance films. You get the sense from the very beginning. The music, the black and white stills for the credits, and even the font harkened back to older cinema and the romanticism of nostalgia.
The film focuses on Ramona (played by Lourdes Hernández), or Ona as she goes by, an actor who moves back to Madrid after years of living elsewhere in Europe. She’s an actor who has an audition coming up. And as she strolls in the area where the audition will take place, she has meet-cute. In total romantic comedy fashion, they don’t exchange names. Which means you know they will meet again. And they do. He turns out to be Bruno (played by Bruno Lastra), the director of the film she auditions for. She doesn’t want to take part in the film because of his admitted attraction to her during their meet-cute, but her boyfriend, Nico (played by Francesco Carril), encourages her and thus drives the film forward.
That was something I liked about the film. Often in rom-coms, the significant other is portrayed as absent or uncaring, or just a horrible match for the person. Though Nico doesn’t take her anxiety about their apartment seriously, he’s supportive of her and doesn’t hold her back, and with convincing, he will get out of bed at 3 am to stand at the top of the stairs to make sure she gets up safe. Because it’s a rom-com, we know the chances of Nico and Ramona remaining together at the end are slim, though I won’t spoil the ending. Still, I liked that the film didn’t villainize either of them to make room for a romance (or showmance) between Ona and Bruno. Another thing I enjoyed is that Ramona’s daughter was never really used as a reason for why she couldn’t pursue a relationship with Bruno.
It’s not just the opening credits of the film that are in black and white. The majority of the film’s shot in black and white, except for anything that’s supposed to be on camera. We get our first hint of this when Ona auditions with her dramatic monologue inspired by Annie Hall. This serves as both an intro of colour and a further introduction of personality, especially as her comedic monologue (also filmed in colour) is from Before Sunset. Her POV of seeing comedy in drama and drama in comedy is a nice touch of character. I didn’t find much difference in Lourdes Hernández’s line readings from either film to overtly distinguish one as a comedy or a drama monologue without the preface, and that may have been the point. The film is about the feud between sense and sensibility, and while that is mainly about her emotions in regards to Bruno, it can also be about how we perceive things. Our understandings of comedy and drama can be altered when we shift our perspectives. This view can be used as a lens to view the relationships in the film.
Even though I was relying on the subtitles to understand the dialogue of the film, I did find it distracting that the sound would sometimes shift from stereo to mono (or like they were off mic). It took me out of the film on more than one occasion.
Ramona premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Proxima Competition.
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