Leah Jones has just lost her parents in a car accident. She’s 19, she’s grieving, and she’s been sent to live in a town by the sea under the care of Axel Nguyen, her brother’s best friend. That’s a real premise, full of grief and a troubled bond between two people who barely know how to be around each other. Jorge Alonso, directing from Sara Belloso’s script, does not do much with it.
The Setup Works Better Than What Follows
The move to the sea gives the film its best strength: a view worth looking at, which does more work than most of the lines given to the cast. Leah’s nightmares and her broken sense of self are named early and then mostly just repeated, never made deeper. The film knows what Leah is supposed to be feeling. It rarely finds a fresh way to show it.
Corceiro and Iglesias Carry the Weight
Margarida Corceiro plays Leah, and Maxi Iglesias plays Axel, and together they are the reason to watch this at all. The feeling between them is real. It is the one part of the film that stands out at every turn, even when the script around them goes slack.
The rest of the cast fills out the town around Leah:
- Natalia Rodríguez as Elena
- Sebastián Zurita as Oliver
- Adriana Hormigos as Belén
- Javier Tolosa as Alejandro
None of them get much room to stand out beyond their given part.
A Story That Refuses to Surprise You
The film moves through Leah’s grief, her move to the coast, her nightmares and her bond with Axel exactly as expected, beat for beat. There’s no force built into any of it. It follows its source novel closely enough that you can feel the adaptation checking boxes rather than building scenes.
Where This Goes Wrong
- Grief is named, not examined.
- The nightmares set a mood but never shape the story.
- The romance is the only bond given real weight.
- The view by the sea is doing work the script should be doing.
- Nothing in the back half surprises you if you paid attention to the front half.
The Verdict
This film is competent. That’s the word for it. Corceiro and Iglesias hold the center, and the view by the sea gives the camera something worth looking at. But Alonso and Belloso never push past the surface of Leah’s grief or her broken sense of self, and the story never risks a single unexpected turn.
Readers of the novel will get exactly what they came for, faithfully and without surprises. Anyone hoping for real dramatic force will leave wanting.
5.2 of 10.
