THE main element of the title of Spanish filmmaker David Trueba’s prize-winning film begins the second stanza of “Strawberry Fields Forever”, which John Lennon composed in 1966 while tripping on substances.

The title’s parenthetical part offers several possibilities from which filmgoers may choose a purpose. One is the obstinate determination of Antonio (Javier Camara) who uses Beatles lyrics as teaching aids for his English class. Learning that John Lennon is making a movie near the coastal town Almeria, Antonio has set off in his small car to get the good oil about the text of “Help” (there is in this an apposite duality of intention).

Another is Juanjo (Francesco Colomer), 16, who’s leaving home to escape from his middle-class family has no real purpose.

Neither has Belen (Natalia de Molina) also an escapee, from a church institution to which parents send pregnant unmarried teenaged daughters to hide family shame.

At a service station, Belen, judging Antonio less likely to monster her than the flash fellow who has given her a lift so far, persuades him to include Juanjo in the party.

This is the foundation for a slow-paced road movie offering warm, gentle humour combined with subtle and abrasive observations of the influences in Spain in 1966 of the Catholic church and Franco fascism. Filmed in and around Almeria, its visual values offer a sere landscape rather resembling Australia’s outback only hillier.

At Palace Electric