María's Way

Maria has a stall on the Camino de Santiago trail, stamping the booklets of pilgrims who pass by. It's a lonely station, an inherited one - a local priest asked her mother to give a rough count of those who came through, years ago. Her mother could not read or write, so at the end of the month Maria counted up the stones her mother placed in a can. She continues this same work even now.

In a beautiful, empty bit of the Spanish countryside, a sloping lane that abuts a road, travellers are few. Some are uncomprehending, others impolite, a variety that is to some extent entertaining in their gaucheness or obliviousness. Maria endures, with her parasol with dangling dried gourds, her ancient wooden desk, her stamp that came from Madrid.

Anne Milne's film is a gentle, touching, a portrait of a woman with a calling, even if it is, seemingly, a minor one.