EL ORFANATO
(THE ORPHANAGE)
(Review)
Laura (Mar adentro‘s Belén Rueda) was once a ward of the Good Shepherd Orphanage, and now she’s returned with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and son Simon (Roger Princep), with the intention of turning the sprawling structure into a home for special needs children.
But Simon makes some new invisible friends (the imaginative tyke already has two when they move in, Watson and Pepe), who may not be imaginary after all, and who’ve been lonely for a very long time…
Produced by Guillermo del Toro, written by Sergio Sánchez and directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, El Orfanato is an exquisitely melancholy ghost story that operates in the same spectral realm as Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others and del Toro’s El Espinazo Del Diablo (The Devil’s Backbone). And depending on one’s particular reading of the film, El Orfanato also shares certain narrative characteristics and themes with del Toro’s El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth).
Given these apparent commonalities, it’s interesting to note that Sánchez points to both J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw as his main (literary) influences for El Orfanato, while Bayona looked to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as his narrative template.
Moreover though, it’s a comforting surprise that El Orfanato is the feature debut for both Sánchez and Bayona. The certitude and confidence that clearly informs the film seems to have come from practiced, veteran hands. The fact that it stems from two newcomers not only makes the film even more astounding, it also effectively underscores the importance of El Orfanato as a magnificent harbinger of better, brighter things to come from the pair.
Sánchez is not only poised to write another script for Bayona (for what he calls a “sci-fi love story”), he’s also writing 3993 for del Toro, which will close the director’s Spanish Civil War trilogy (alongside El Espinazo Del Diablo and El Laberinto Del Fauno), and looking to direct his third feature film screenplay, The Homecoming, which he’s described as “a fantasy film, a horror story about the end of the world.”
Given how fantastic El Orfanato has turned out, all these various projects look very promising indeed.
To return to the matter at hand though, El Orfanato is an expertly crafted and surprisingly moving film that is, perhaps, more creepy than it is outright scary. But then again, this terribly effective exercise in quiet horror isn’t really about the sudden shocks.
It’s about loss, and fear, and perception, and just how far a mother is willing to go to be with her child.
It’s also about the difficulties involved in going home, because in El Orfanato, it isn’t exactly true that you can never go home again, but rather, that though it is possible to return home, the price for that return ticket is an awfully steep one.
Parting shot: Among the numerous honours bestowed upon El Orfanato, were 7 awards (out of a field of 9 nominations) at the Barcelona Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Actress (for Rueda), and Best New Director.
At the Goya Awards, the film took home 7 out of an astounding 14 nominations, including Best New Director and Best Screenplay – Original.
(El Orfanato OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of twitchfilm.net; DVD cover art courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)
(Review)
Laura (Mar adentro‘s Belén Rueda) was once a ward of the Good Shepherd Orphanage, and now she’s returned with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and son Simon (Roger Princep), with the intention of turning the sprawling structure into a home for special needs children.
But Simon makes some new invisible friends (the imaginative tyke already has two when they move in, Watson and Pepe), who may not be imaginary after all, and who’ve been lonely for a very long time…
Produced by Guillermo del Toro, written by Sergio Sánchez and directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, El Orfanato is an exquisitely melancholy ghost story that operates in the same spectral realm as Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others and del Toro’s El Espinazo Del Diablo (The Devil’s Backbone). And depending on one’s particular reading of the film, El Orfanato also shares certain narrative characteristics and themes with del Toro’s El Laberinto Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth).
Given these apparent commonalities, it’s interesting to note that Sánchez points to both J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw as his main (literary) influences for El Orfanato, while Bayona looked to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as his narrative template.
Moreover though, it’s a comforting surprise that El Orfanato is the feature debut for both Sánchez and Bayona. The certitude and confidence that clearly informs the film seems to have come from practiced, veteran hands. The fact that it stems from two newcomers not only makes the film even more astounding, it also effectively underscores the importance of El Orfanato as a magnificent harbinger of better, brighter things to come from the pair.
Sánchez is not only poised to write another script for Bayona (for what he calls a “sci-fi love story”), he’s also writing 3993 for del Toro, which will close the director’s Spanish Civil War trilogy (alongside El Espinazo Del Diablo and El Laberinto Del Fauno), and looking to direct his third feature film screenplay, The Homecoming, which he’s described as “a fantasy film, a horror story about the end of the world.”
Given how fantastic El Orfanato has turned out, all these various projects look very promising indeed.
To return to the matter at hand though, El Orfanato is an expertly crafted and surprisingly moving film that is, perhaps, more creepy than it is outright scary. But then again, this terribly effective exercise in quiet horror isn’t really about the sudden shocks.
It’s about loss, and fear, and perception, and just how far a mother is willing to go to be with her child.
It’s also about the difficulties involved in going home, because in El Orfanato, it isn’t exactly true that you can never go home again, but rather, that though it is possible to return home, the price for that return ticket is an awfully steep one.
Parting shot: Among the numerous honours bestowed upon El Orfanato, were 7 awards (out of a field of 9 nominations) at the Barcelona Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Actress (for Rueda), and Best New Director.
At the Goya Awards, the film took home 7 out of an astounding 14 nominations, including Best New Director and Best Screenplay – Original.
(El Orfanato OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of twitchfilm.net; DVD cover art courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)
No comments:
Post a Comment