Film/ The Education of Fairies (La educacion de hadas)

"The Education of Fairies" (La educacion de hadas), 2006, by director Jose Luis Cuerda pretends to take place in the present; it is really a wondrous fairy tale. Like all such stories, it offers a warning of the dangers of living in a partial world with a partial view, however beautiful.

Nicolas, a middle-aged toy designer with mercurial sparkle in his eyes, lives in a beautiful and rambling stone casita in the Catalan countryside with his childhood nanny-cum-housekeeper. On a flight to Barcelona he sees Ingrid and her precocious young son, Raul, and instantly falls madly in love with both.

Ingrid, an ornithologist, is conveniently divorced from her son’s now dead father who was a pilot and a Viscount, which makes her the modern equivalent of a princess. She and Nicolas marry and for two years happiness reigns in the secluded domain. Nicolas and Ingrid enjoy a passionate love life and Raul receives a fanciful education on the lives and powers of fairies in his nightly bedtime stories from Nicolas. The stepfather and young boy bond deeply in walks in their own enchanted forest complete with magical trees and a secret hideaway.

Then the magic seems to come undone, the spell broken. Raul will not agree to being adopted by a man with such a common last name. Ingrid wants separate bedrooms, complaining of Nicolas’ snoring, and then threatens a more complete break. But why? He loves her; she loves him; there is no one else. All we know is that Ingrid is a beautiful woman who is about to turn 40 and breaks into tears whenever she looks into the mirror. While waiting for Ingrid to decide, act or explain her withdrawal Nicolas makes too many nervous trips to the local supermarket, where he meets Sezar, the abused checkout clerk.

Sezar, the grandchild of martyred Spanish Republicans, has come to Barcelona from her native Algeria en route to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. She is waiting for her final letter of acceptance. Meanwhile she meets a charming street performer who turns out to be a drug dealer. Molested by her ogre boss at the market, beaten up by two thuggish co-horts of her now-jailed ex-boyfriend, she crosses paths with Nicolas who sweeps her into his vintage white Jaguar Roadster and out of this mess.

He takes Sezar to the secret hideaway in the enchanted forest where he tells her his story- more than he has revealed to Ingrid. The lonely child of an unmarried mother, his only romantic attachment prior to Ingrid was with Beatrice, the discarded last girlfriend of his bankrupted and suicided father. Beatrice died pregnant with Nicolas’ unborn child. Even Nicolas’ glamorous car is second-hand from his father; he and Ingrid and Raul live in the house inherited from his dead grandparents. He lives entirely in the imagination trying to obviate and compensate for a lineage of sorrow and neglect. He has made nothing in life but games.

Raul has received another education, more practical and worldly, from interaction with his classmates and their parents. Moreover, like Sezar, he has a fiery past and a sense of the future. The image of his aviator father disintegrating in mid-air for a noble cause feeds his heroic nature and his practical side knows that he will grow up to be the next Viscount Rocca di Castelgrande. He despairs of the unhappiness in his house but will not succumb in sorrow and dreams. He goes to the magic tree in the enchanted forest and discovers Sezar. He mistakes her for one of the fairies he has been trying to contact to fix the obvious and inexplicable problems between his mother and much-loved stepfather.

Raul has been told that fairies have a kind of amnesia and must be re-educated into their prodigious powers. He leaps to the task with gusto and faith, constantly checking Sezar’s mathematical abilities to verify his progress. Raul and Sezar are kindred spirits, alive to the action of life. Sezar is literally physically scarred by an endless litany of life’s cruel tragedies but she has transformed them into stepping-stones out of the past and toward a new future.

She receives the letter of acceptance to the Sorbonne. Before leaving for Paris Sezar confronts Ingrid, who reveals what she has kept from the others. Ingrid has been told, and tests have proven, that she has an incurable, though not cancerous, lesion in her brain- that she could die at any moment, though she appears radiantly healthy. She has decided, alone and unilaterally, that it will be best for Nicolas and her son if she leaves them now, before the envisioned ugliness and pain arrive. Trapped within the powers of her negative imagination, Ingrid is haunted by the vivid specter of that which is not there and blind to the reality and challenge in front of her.

Sezar is not so romantic and points out that any of them could die at any moment and offers Ingrid her philosophy of active determination and joy, suggesting that Ingrid tell Nicolas her buried secret. Sezar has done what she can and rides out of this story and into her destiny on a modest motorbike. The film ends with Ingrid, alone, pacing back and forth on the balcony, undecided about what to do and unknowing of how to decide.

One wishes for a simple, happy ending for all, but it cannot be so. Nicolas and Ingrid cannot confide in each other and with outer lives of independent ease and comfort they lack a means of connection to a larger world and remain characters in an entirely personal, storybook dimension. In that partial sphere even the blessings of love and kindness are not enough to satisfy and set free real people. Sezar has passed many tests in the world and knows she has the strength to desire and choose life. Raul has met his first challenge on the road to adulthood with courage, ingenuity and humility. She and Raul live outside the spell of romantic, beautiful sadness in which Ingrid and Nicolas are still caught.

Irene Jacob as Ingrid and Ricardo Darin as Nicolas are both superb in capturing the haunted anguish of their character’s inability to mature. Victor Valdivia as Raul and Bebe as Sezar give engaging performances filled with life, hope and joy.