NEW YORK (OSV News) – For a love story lightly dusted with spirituality, viewers can tune in to the Hallmark Channel romance “Journey to You,” which premiered April 19. The film dramatizes how a quasi-pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) changes the outlook of an overworked Boston nurse-practitioner.
Too many hours in the emergency room and too few vacation days have left Monica Miller (Erin Cahill) stressed and unfocused on her personal life. So, when she’s passed over for a promotion she was expecting, she feels the need for a fresh start.
Her widowed mom Olivia (Yvette Filanc) suggests that Monica walk a portion of the Camino, the network of paths toward Spain’s cathedral of Santiago de Compostela along which her parents first met. She takes up the idea and joins three other travelers making the trek in the care of matriarchal guide Consuelo (Isabelle Brès).
Monica’s trio of newfound companions is composed of divorced Spanish American psychologist Luis (Erik Valdez), his father, Ernesto (Pep Tosar), and his easily-bored teen son, Mateo (Solal Bellaiche). Despite the mild bickering to which he and his relatives are much given, Luis is more or less perpetually chipper and open to adventure.
Presumably Catholic Ernesto is a believer in prayer. But Mateo, avowing his doubts about God’s existence, is initially resistant to doing anything overtly religious. For her part, Monica carries a book of daily devotions with her. As the last gift her father ever gave her, it’s a particularly prized possession.
The goodhearted proceedings include some less-than-convincing plot complications and viewers may have their reservations about the bond that develops between Monica and Luis, given his status as a resident of splitsville.
But the movie, directed by Terry Ingram, is so squeaky clean that it takes three tries for the central couple — sparks also eventually fly between Ernesto and Consuelo — to achieve their first kiss. And the script, penned by John Eliot Jordan and Carlie Mantilla-Jordan, makes an explicit reference to the separate bedrooms they occupy.
Pleasant and undemanding, “Journey to You” may serve to spark interest in the millennium-long history of the Camino and the customs attached to it, both for those undertaking the trip for religious reasons and those with more touristic motivations. The value of such pilgrimages from a Catholic perspective, moreover, might make a good topic for an Eastertide family discussion.
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