College Boarding House (1925)

A coming-of-age movie set in the city of Santiago de Compostela and the Galician countryside (Spain) at the end of the 19th Century. Gerardo (Luis Peña), a young man from a good family who leads a dissolute life, is banished by his father to the farthest university from Madrid in order to settle down and finish his studies. During his journey into exile, the narrator begins to make fun of him and won't stop throughout the film. Since arriving in that centuries-old, remote, small city of dark and rainy winter, Gerardo feels alone and miserable. His life will change after being wounded in a fight defending a drunken old man. At this point, two stories begin: a love story with Carmen (Carmen Viance) -a slow, formal, romantic love story of those years- and a student story with the 'Trojan Order' -a frantic story of little money, stress before exams but a lot of fun as well-. Both run parallel in time, independently of each other, with hardly any link, until they converge when Gerardo's friends -enthusiastically, seamlessly- decide to intervene to help him solve the intrigue plotted by his rival's family. It will be necessary to do many things, but the 'Trojans' will always support Gerardo. One and the other story comes to an end -for different reasons- on the same day, the day that marks the beginning of a new life for all of them.