| Director | Javier Fesser |
|---|
Camino and her family belong to the Opus Dei. She develops a crush for a boy (Cuco/Jesús). Camino's elder sister is a Catholic acolyte, deliberately kept from contacting her family. Suppressing open signs of normal maternal grief, the mother seems almost inhuman in urging her dying daughter to "offer up" her suffering for Jesus. The father struggles to protect his daughter from a concerted effort to canonize her (even before her death) by his wife, elder daughter, and Catholic officials. Even the hospital medical staff seem to be complicit in this.
Jesús, the name Camino invokes, is not Christ, but that of her normal schoolgirl crush. This is shown in dream sequences she experiences throughout the film.