‘Palm Trees In The Snow’ Is Your New Go-To Passionate Escape On Netflix

I’ve been open in the past about how I love Spanish romantic dramas. I tore through the courtly intrigue of Isabel. I became whole-heartedly obsessed with seamstress-turned-gunrunner-turned-spy Sira in The Time In Between. I even succumbed to the dopey charms of Velvet. So it should come as no shock that I am 100% on board with Netflix’s latest steamy Spanish import: Palm Trees In The Snow.

Palm Trees In The Snow has been described as Spain’s attempt at their version of Out of Africa. It kind of is and it kind of isn’t. Palm Trees In The Snow is a crazy expensive epic romance set on an African plantation, but while the Sidney Pollack film is a moody film exploring one European woman’s journey to self discovery, Palm Trees In The Snow is a multi-generational saga that confronts the darker side of colonialism.

The film opens with a passionate inter-racial sex scene in 1970s Africa. The two lovers are sobbing as they cling to each other. A storm boils outside. In the morning they part – apparently forever. Then we jump to the 21st century. A young woman named Clarence (The Time In Between‘s Adriana Ugarte) is burying her father in the snow-capped mountains. She soon discovers that her family has secrets they left behind in Africa and she wants to journey them to uncover the truth. The film toggles between her story and her uncle’s experiences in Africa as a young man.

Let me be frank: This is a very, very long movie. It is two hours and forty-five minutes long. It’s also a gorgeous film. Every shot is saturated with brilliant hues, gorgeous scenery, and even prettier people. So I would suggest that there are two ways to get swept away by this passionate foreign epic. You could carve out a night just to devote to this saga or you could think of it as a miniseries and divvy up the story over a few separate nights. There’s no shame in doing the latter! (No one but you and the Netflix algorithm monitoring when you start and stop watching things will ever know.)

[Watch Palm Trees In The Snow on Netflix]