At 34-years of age, Daniel (Pablo Pineda) is the first student with Down syndrome to obtain a university degree in Europe. After graduation, Daniel is hired by the Disability Services office of Seville, Spain; it is his first job — and just another rung on Daniel’s ladder to normalcy. Daniel almost immediately starts working on the next rung, marriage, after landing the job, falling for a chain-smoking and boozy peroxide blond co-worker named Laura (Lola Dueñas). The question remains, can a “normal” woman fall in love with a man with Down syndrome? Or should Daniel just “Fall in love with women [he] can get”?*

 

Daniel explains at one point during the film that he has advanced beyond most individuals with Down syndrome because his mother (Isabel García Lorca) started talking to him at a very early age; as Daniel grew older his mother realized that he was actually understanding her and they began having discussions about philosophy, politics, etc. 

 

(Daniel’s parents are intellectuals who love and trust him implicitly.) Eventually Daniel was assimilated into Seville’s school system and progressed all the way to and through college Raised, essentially, as a “normal” person, Daniel is unsure of where his normalcy ends. How assimilated into Spanish society can he possibly become?

 

Is normalcy something that is worth aspiring to? (When Daniel confesses to Laura that he wants to be her boyfriend because she makes him “feel normal,” Laura retorts “Why would you want to be normal?”) Is Laura — a nymphomaniac who abandoned her family for undisclosed reasons — any more normal than Daniel?