2023 Show
Antonio Díaz Huerta · Spain · Basque, Spanish
An okay if uneven family drama set in the coast of Danibane
What do you do when you have to move to a parent you’ve never met? Or when the child you never raised went back to you? Itxaso and the Sea explores this in this Basque family drama, with coming-of-age and slightly suspenseful subplots. Itxaso, raised in Mexico, is a fish-out-of-water in this coastal town, and, with the upheavals in her life, has a choice to make between staying and reconnecting with her father, and her Basque heritage. Mikel, who stayed behind town, tries to keep his surfing school and his life the way it is. There’s a compelling plot here, as they try to grasp the lives they want to live, over connecting with each other, but the series’ multiple subplots muddle the personal family dynamic.
Itxaso is 17 and lives in Mexico. However, when her mother dies, she has no option but to move to a coastal village in the Basque Country to live with her father Mikel. Mikel is a former surf champion who runs a small school. He is a man that Itxaso doesn't know and that she will be forced to get along with no matter how different they are.
After she loses her mother in Mexico City, Itxaso moves all the way to a coastal town in the Basque Country, where her father, a man she’s never met, lives.
Itxaso and the Sea is a family drama where a father and daughter awkwardly try to reconnect with each other. It’s also a coming-of-age series as Itxaso tries to adjust from her high-spending city life to her father’s calmer, small-town coastal living, and gets to know other residents, including some of her father’s former students. On top of this, there’s a whole business scheme as Mikel tries to make his surfing school profitable, much to the chagrin of his much richer friend. The series has a hard time balancing between these plotlines, but in trying to do all of these, it misses out on the emotional core between father and daughter – the shared grief of losing former wife and mother Elene.
Soup indeed does cure everything.
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
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