A father is called to France to collect the body of his son who has died on a walking pilgrimmage along the 800km Camino de Santiago (Way of St James). The film follows him as he decides to complete the walk in what becomes his own personal pilgrimmage.
The film is fantastic on the way it captures the essence of what doing a walk of this kind is like. The familiar faces that become friends. The frustrations when they're there and you want to be alone. The little things that become significant just for being outside daily life. Glorious countryside at times revelled in, at times ignored.
But the walk is really a visual motif representing the spiritual journey the walker is making. This is where the film really lifts itself above the crowd, finding a light touch to bring emotional resonance to points a heavy hand would drag down to cliché.
A minor complaint would be never showing the hard miles, blister lancing or foot bandaging that these walks require. But, perhaps because I enjoy a long break plodding from A to B, this is by far my favourite film of the year so far.
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