That remoteness was what attracted Martin Verfondern and Margo Pool, a Dutch couple who moved there in the 1990s to farm and enjoy the isolation. It seems it was a happy decision for the pair, who evidently loved their new life. But it’s not long into the film that we learn that the couple’s existence was recently shattered. Martin disappeared and foul play was suspected, with suspicion falling on the only other people living in Santoalla, a Spanish family named Rodrigues, who’ve been farming the same ground for a couple of generations at least.
When the film turns back the clock to look at the Dutch couple’s life prior to Martin’s disappearance, Margo serves as narrator (the filmmakers are never seen or heard). Speaking in Dutch-accented English, she recalls her and Martin’s decision to leave behind Amsterdam and a world where civilization meant living by other people’s “rules.” They were archetypal latter-day hippies, in other words, and they found a natural haven in Santoalla, where the goats and other animals they raised were their main companions. (This part of the story is told using old photos as well as film footage shot while Martin was still around.)
If Margo never seems grief-stricken or distraught when speaking of Martin in the past tense, that’s because a certain kind of northern stoicism seems a part of her make-up. You can imagine her as a settler wife speaking dispassionately about a husband who’s been spirited away by Indians in the Old West. As in that analogy, there’s an element of cultural clashes to this story.
The Rodrigues clan was rooted to the land and their culture’s old ways. Their number includes a rather wily and imperious matriarch, and one son who is mentally challenged. They're a strange bunch, and not the friendliest folks you’ve ever seen. We soon come to understand that there was never any friendship between the two clans. They were too different, and the Spaniards evidently didn’t appreciate the interlopers.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46smKesn5a5ra2Ma2dqbw%3D%3D