Yahoo News ‘20,000 Species of Bees’ Review: A Tender and Assured Feature Debut About Gender and the Generational Divide
For her first feature, Spanish writer-director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren certainly hasn’t chosen an easy subject to deal with, even if it’s one that’s about as topical as you can get right now.
And yet this moving chronicle of an 8-year-old’s gradual transitioning, and the effect it has on a family over their summer vacation, manages to be both timely and timeless, making its hot-button issue feel like part of a larger, spiritual cycle of life and loss. Carried by impressively fluid, determinedly naturalistic filmmaking, with performances that never hit a false note, 20,000 Species of Bees (20.000 especies de abejas) marks an assured debut, slowly but surely hitting an emotional crescendo during its final minutes.
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The film’s specific style and setting are evident from the get-go, immersing us in a world that we discover over the course of an unhurried two hours. Using a handheld camera and a documentary-like approach, Urresola Solaguren captures pivotal events as if they were quietly unfolding in real time, never overemphasizing the drama that constantly bubbles beneath the surface. Her methods recall the work of both Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers, as well as a new generation of Spanish directors like Carla Simón, who won Berlin’s Golden Bear award last year with Alcarràs.
An in media res opening immediately plunges us into Basque Country, first on the French side of the border in Bayonne, then on the Spanish side for the remainder of the movie. It’s there that Aitor (Sofía Otero), who’s been nicknamed Cocó, travels with mother Ane (Patricia López Arnaiz) and two older siblings to visit their grandma in a tiny village filled with playful children and gossiping old-timers.
This is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else by their first name, which quickly poses a problem when Aitor prefers to be called otherwise, creating a dilemma that gradually snowballs when the child, born biologically male, starts to openly identify as a young girl.
Aitor does this quietly at first, in well-observed sequences where, for instance, she stares mesmerized as a baby boy pees beside her, or else ignores comments about the long hair she refuses to cut. These subtle moments are not lost on Ane, but she’s grown used to her kid’s behavior and altogether tolerant of it, at least for the time being. The same, however, cannot be said for her mother (Itziar Lazkano), who lives by the old ways and finds Aitor to be both undisciplined and embarrassing.
There’s another issue pitting Ane against her mother, which is the legacy of her father — a deceased sculptor whose bronze statues are stored in the family garage and erected around their village (one of them has gone missing when the film starts). An artist herself who never made it, Ane worships her father and wants to follow in his footsteps, which is something her mother doesn’t quite tolerate, either. The fact that Ane is also in the process of separating from her husband (Martxelo Rubio) only deepens the chasm, creating several layers of tension that boil over by the last act.
With all the conflict and consternation plaguing the family, there’s only one place where anyone can find respite, which is the pastoral beekeeping farm that’s maintained by Ane’s aunt, Lourdes (Ane Gabarain). A longstanding tradition in this part of Basque territory, bees seem to serve several functions: pollination, of course, but also creating beeswax that Ane uses for her sculptures and, most fascinatingly, providing a healing service via bee venom acupuncture (ouch) administered by Lourdes.
As Aitor grows increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin, and begins to voice a desire to be treated as a girl by friends and family — a desire that comes to a head during a visit to the public pool and ladies’ restroom — she finds refuge with her great aunt in the peaceful harmony of the hillside, bees buzzing all around them like tiny voices. If 20,000 Species is ultimately about tolerance and acceptance, then the insects serve as a holistic device that guide Aitor and her family toward a deeper understanding.
Solaguren’s approach to this is so natural, so woven into the fabric of the people and place she’s depicting, that her film’s most pivotal scenes almost happen without one noticing. It’s as if they were part of a long and organic evolution, only a small portion of which cinematographer Gina Ferrer García manages to capture with her warm and fluid lensing, tracking the characters closely at all times.
In a movie composed of tiny moments, the performances often feel so real that they take on the guise of a documentary — and one that recalls French director Sébastien Lifshitz’s real portrait of a trans child, Petite fille, which came out in 2020. What both films have in common is a mother who fully accepts her young child’s transformation and also sees it as a stand against an intolerant world.
The endearing Otero, who makes her screen debut, is clearly the centerpiece of the film, holding our attention as her character eventually comes into her own. More often than not, we witness the girl’s growing pains through the eyes of the excellent López Arnaiz (The Daughter), effortlessly playing a mother in the midst of a midlife crisis that becomes transformative as well, reminding her that she needs to protect her kids from making the same bad choices she once did.
20,000 Species of Bees returns to Ane’s loving if concerned gaze time and again — most memorably at the very close of the film when she not only firmly stands by her youngest child’s bold decision, but appears to be empowered by it. As are we.
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