PAIN AND GLORY

Pedro Almodovar returns to our screens with a beautifully acted, deeply personal film about a director on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His avatar is Antonio Banderas - living in an apartment that exactly matches Almodovar's own clashes of bright colours and crazy patterns - wearing a frizzy spiky hairstyle that matches Almodovar's own.  In this most meta of texts, the director is struggling with psychological and physical pain. He is struggling to cope with the death of his mother, and suffering from tinnitus, chronic back pain, and god knows what else.  Foolishly, he decides to self-medicate with heroin, peddled by an old actor that he infamously fell out with over an early film.  When that film plays in retrospective, and the director runs scared from a Q&A this gives us one of the funniest and darkest scenes of the film.  Anyways, the heroin and the melancholy lead to flashbacks to the director's childhood - one of poverty and precocity.  He is pulled out of that poverty by an indomitable but bigoted mother (Penelope Cruz), and feels the first pangs of lust for the builder he teaches to read and write.  The final act twist takes this memory too far for my liking, but I love the idea that old love can force a reckoning, and an awakening.  In the director's case, he cleans himself up when he meets an old lover, who in turns contacts him when the old actor speaks a monologue inspired by their affair. It's telling that the director wants the play to be anonymous, but meeting the lover forces him to take ownership of his past. From then, reconciliation can begin.

The film is full of love, longing and sadness.  There are laughs, but far fewer than in a typical Almodovar movie.  The mother is not judged harshly - rather there's a lot of love and gratitude between her and her son. It's just that her religion cannot truly cope with her son's gay existence. They live in a kind of mutual lie, speaking openly but also not. Julieta Serrano, playing the mother in old age, gives the most wonderful performance of the film, second only to that of Banderas himself. It's a quiet performance. There's so much pain and fear and regret in a single sigh or look. And yet also the capacity for absurdist gonzo humour when called for. And finally, real joy. He is rightly being nominated for awards and it's a tragedy he's not winning them for a performance that's so moving, and so nuanced.

As for the film, I thought it clever and moving.  At its most meta moments it's quite audacious. But it suffers, as does 8 1/2 which clearly inspired it, for being a kind of portmanteau of memories and key moments and obviously symmetric confrontations.  It doesn't feel organic. It's not meant too. But that did make it feel a bit disjointed to me, and sometimes brought me out of my emotional response to the film.

PAIN AND GLORY is rated R and has a running time of 118 minutes. It played Cannes, Toronto and Telluride 2019 and is now available to rent and own.

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Eight

That Terry Gilliam finally managed to make his accursed Don Quixote film is a thing of joy - and how wonderful to watch it and realise that it is truly joyful of itself! I came out of the film beaming - having seen some wonderful verbal humour, some insane slapstick, some superb LOST IN LA MANCHA in-jokes, Adam Driver doing a zany Eddie Cantor song-and-dance routine, and a truly moving story about romantic delusion!

The film works as a film within a film.  As we open, Adam Driver's cynical, selfish ad director Toby is on a shoot in Spain featuring the picaresque medieval character Don Quixote - the old dusty man convinced that he is knight, who travels aimlessly with his sidekick Sancho Panza, tilting at windmills that he thinks are giants, and risking all to win the love of his beloved Dulcinea. Within the "real world" framing device, Toby is tupping the wife of his boss, who's simultaneously cosying up to a Russian oligarch who's just bought a castle. In scenes that satirise spoiled wannabe Hollywood directors we see a frustrated man reminisce about a student film he made about Don Quixote and venture back to that village to relive his youth.

What I love about the film is that it works on many levels. On one hand, it's a warning about how Hollywood can corrupt and distort. The man who played Toby's Don Quixote (Jonathan Pryce) has now gone mad and believes he IS Don Quixote and that Toby is his Sancho. And the girl that Toby fell for and told she could become a star ended up chasing that dream, failing and becoming a prostitute in Marseilles. So within this madcap comedy, Gilliam feels comfortable showing us some dark material, referencing Brexit, Syrian refugees, prejudice against gypsies, Russian corruption. And of course, we can draw our parallels to the prejudices of Quixote's time.

If the first act of the film is all about Toby's current world, the second act sees him on the road with Quixote, getting into scrapes. This is the section of the film I most enjoyed pretty much entirely because Adam Driver - freed from the shackles of a multi-billion dollar franchise - is clearly having the time of his life. The third act sees the medieval delusion rub back up against the real world in a kind of nightmarish frenzy that actually reminded me a bit of the end of THE PRINCESS BRIDE - people chasing round castles after damsels in distress on horseback...

Overall, THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE is the most joyous, and certainly the most coherent of Gilliam's recent films.  I had predicted before watching it that a 2hr 15 min running time meant it was bound to be a bit shambolic and have about 25 mins too much content. But I was wrong - this is actually a pretty tightly written film, and despite its many layers, it holds itself together well.  

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE has a running time of 132 minutes. The film played Cannes 2018 and has opened in many European countries since. It has yet to be released in the USA or UK.

GRAND PIANO - LFF 2013 - Day Six - Absurdly Late Review!

One of the films getting the most buzz at this year's London Film Festival is Damien Chazelle's music lesson slash thriller WHIPLASH starring J K Simmons.  And as luck would have it, the movie he penned, GRAND PIANO, is on release this week in the UK.  The similarities are striking - a thriller set in the world of classical music.  And while I didn't manage to watch it at last year's LFF, I did catch it today on its theatrical release.

GRAND PIANO stars Elijah Wood as a concert pianist on the eve of giving his comeback concert after some kind of breakdown. He's evidently riven with stage fright  and early on has a deep and meaningful conversation with a fellow musician about the relative merits of giving a passionate authentic performance or just technically playing the exact right notes. (Of course, this skirts the fact that you can do both - it doesn't have to be Lang Lang vs Leslie Howard - it can be Brendel.)

George Ghon comments on THE SKIN I LIVE IN

Art keeps you free.

George Ghon, fashion writer, stylist, editor of ALPHA magazine, and cinephile, comments on THE SKIN I LIVE IN.......

Pedro Almodóvar’s THE SKIN I LIVE IN is a multi-faceted film, an experiment that combines the tradition of Greek drama with a modern, slightly surreal medical thriller. The central character, a brilliant Antonio Banderas as Robert Ledgard, is the contemporary equivalent to a doomed ancient king. He attempts to transcend his own human powers, plays god, and is bitterly punished for his hubris. He is an enormously talented surgeon that has pushed the boundaries in transplantology, scion of a wealthy family, and yet, his life is not a happy game. He tried to save his wife after she burned in a car crash, on the run with her lover. He tried to save his daughter, after the fragile girl got abused and raped in the scenic setting of a lush garden party. Both those women, for whom he had so much affection, took their own lives and found a sudden, unexpected death when jumping out through an open window. These bitter experiences, as well as his talent and money, make for an ambivalent character. On one hand brutal and powerful, but at the same time sensitive and almost loveable in his passion.

He finds his victim and, like Pygmalion, uses his skill to shape it into his perfect partner. In Ovid’s metamorphoses Venus grants the sculptor’s wish and the ivory statue becomes alive. In the Spanish town of Toledo, set in the year 2012, the surgeon also hopes for divine intervention. From the wall of his staircase lurks an oversized Venus d’Urbino, the renaissance painting originally conceived by Titian. It can (re-) ignite love and passion in its spectators, but it has also been seen as marriage picture, as object that was deliberately made to affirm and save the relationship of a couple. 

None other than recreating his lost love is Robert’s aim. But he reverts to dubious practises in order to achieve his goal, and fails miserably in the end. During the opening shots, we can see a beautiful, slightly androgynous girl practising Yoga in a locked room (Elena Anaya as Vera). Guarding her perfect body in a tightly fitted suit, she is completely shut off from the outside world. The only solace she can find, except from physical workout, is engaging with the art of Louise Bourgeois, which she learns through books coming up in a little elevator. She tears apart swatches of fabric and re-uses them to form little sculptures. 

First this seems unusual, but not utterly bizarre. Yet. The real story we only learn later in the film. It then becomes clear that Vera is searching for a new identity and delves into sculpture to overcome an existential angst that results from traumatic surgery. She is Robert’s chosen one, the one he experiments on and tries to find love for. By and by, she comes to terms with her fate and accepts the lover’s role, before finally encountering a reawakening reminder of her past. 

This movie deals with the big themes of classic tragedy, with love, loss, and redemption. Shot in beautiful locations and executed with superb cinematography, it is a feast for aesthetes. But the picture goes deeper than just touching the beautiful surface of things. It deals with the skin of bodies, but also affects the lives beneath it. There is a lot to consider about this new Almodóvar, no matter that the story might have its flaws. 

THE SKIN I LIVE IN played Cannes 2011 and was released in August in France, Ireland and the UK. It was released earlier this month in Spain, and is released today in the Czech Republic and Hungary. It played Toronto 2011 next week and opens in Russia and Poland. It opens on September 23rd in Argentina and Italy. It opens in Brazil and the US on October 14th and in Germany on October 20th. It opens in Hong Kong and Sweden on December 2nd.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - BURIED

Ryan Reynolds plays Paul Conroy - a man buried in a coffin - running out air, and running out of cellphone battery life. He frantically tries to call his employers, his wife, the emergency services - he is frustrated, put on hold, given the run around.  It's the perfect horror movie set-up. Claustrophobia - a truly hard deadline - and the frustration that comes of dealing with an invisible enemy and supposed helpers unwilling to realise what's at stake. The concept is brought to screen with absolute perfection: director Rodrigo Cortes and DP Eduardo Gau (A SINGLE MAN) create a sense of true horror by never letting us leave the coffin. We are trapped with Paul, only seeing by the light of his Zippo and only hearing the voices on the other end of the cell. I don't suffer from claustrophobia but I was squirming in my seat by the end of the flick. 

You can take BURIED as a high concept horror flick and leave it at that, but it's so much more. Arguably much of the best horror has a political or social agenda - all those Fifth Columnist body-snatchers, for example - and BURIED is firmly in that tradition. For Paul Conroy is a military contractor working in Iraq, paid by the US government. His captors are angry that he has come to their country and wrought war, but he comes off as naive and deluded - denying that he is a warmonger because he is not actually, technically a US soldier. As the movie develops, we see Paul disabused of that naivete, most brilliantly - not because his captors treat him badly but because his employer does! And, politics aside, who doesn't sympathise with being passed around a phone loop being forever put on hold by ignorant, underpaid, idiots at call centres? 

BURIED is, then, a perfect film. It satisfies both as horror and as political satire. The crew deserve mad props for pulling off the technical feat and for having the good sense never to show a flashback or the face at the other end of the line. Ryan Reynolds deserves props for making his character believable and go on a genuine narrative journey despite the fact that he can barely move. But most of all, praise to the screenwriter Chris Sparling for combining fear, wit and intelligence in equal parts. 

BURIED played Sundance and Toronto 2010 and went on global release last October. It opens in Hungary on April 21st.

London Film Fest 2010 - Day 15 - BIUTIFUL

Alejandro González Iñárritu's last film, BABEL, prompted one of the most excoriating reviews published on this site, as guest reviewer Nikolai, mocked its pomposity and pretension.  I was completely in agreement: it seems to me that ever sense his breathtakingly raw and powerful debut, AMORES PERROS, Iñárritu has done little more than create boring, overly-complicated, emotionally sterile films - beautifully shot maybe - but turgid and unwatchable.  Sadly, BIUTIFUL is no exception to this rule. Watching it feels like being in a lecture hall with a dusty old professor explaining why his theory is very, very clever, and earth-shatteringly important, and achingly sad.  As the minutes pass you get more and more resentful and start wishing for something altogether less earnest and more, well, entertaining.  And the tragedy is that Iñárritu is wasting his talent - his talent for creating arresting visuals, for being totally in control of the screen - and wasting Javier Bardem's talent too. For Bardem, arguably the finest Spanish language actor working today, and one of the best in any language, turns in an award-worthy performance in the lead role.  But to what end?

Bardem plays a man called Uxbal - a man dying of cancer, with little time left and many problems to solve. He is father to two children, still in love with their mother, but unable to trust her with their care given that she is an alcoholic.  So, he tries to amass a small amount of money in order to bribe a seeming stranger into caring for them after he has died. In order to do this, he exploits his gift of people able to speak to the dead, and cuts so many corners in his job as middle man for a gang of Chinese sweatshop owners, that he puts others lives at risk.  The moral quagmire is real and Bardem beautifully portrays a man feeling guilty for selfishly trying to protect his kids - and at the same time knowing that his attempts are essentially futile.  And as the movie grinds into its final stages, we should be moved to tears by his children's plight.  The problem is that our senses are deadened by the socio-political hectoring of the director - Iñárritu's pathological need to inspire liberal angst at the dangerous lives of illegal immigrants and children raised in poverty.  He wants us to feel, but ends up turning us off. And that is the greatest tragedy of all.

BIUTIFUL played Cannes, Telluride, London and Toronto 2010. It was released in 2010 in France, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Denmark and the USA. It is currently on release in Greece, Brazil and Finland and opens this weekend in the UK, Turkey and Portugal. It opens on February 4th in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Italy. It opens on February 9th in Indonesia; on March 10th in Germany and on March 18th in Iceland. It was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film but lost. It has also been nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film and Javier Bardem has been nominated for Best Actor.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 13 - OCTOBER / OCTUBRE

OCTOBER is yet another film in this year's Festival that features a lonely man living an emotionally impoverished life, using whores for release, and finding an unlikely salvation. Frankly, by this point, I'm getting tired of seeing alienating commercial sex, no matter how stylised the framing and how good the acting. Anyways, for what it's worth, in this film, the iteration sees a Peruvian money-lender called Clemente using whores for release and apparently knocking them up fairly often. One day, he finds himself landed with a baby, and while he tries to track down the mother, he hires a middle-aged woman as a child-minder. This sets up an Odd Couple relationship between the quietly subversive child-minder and the emotionally stunted Clemente. In many ways, OCTOBER is an impressive film. The production design, cinematography and performances are all strong and the tone is deadpan and bleak. But I just didn't engage with the characters - the humour wasn't dark enough for me - and frankly, I am pretty tired of the set-up of a soul-less man using whores getting redeemed by meet-cute x. I'd love to see director Diego Vega Vidal addressing another subject.

OCTOBER played Cannes 2010 and is currently on release in Peru and Germany. It opens in France on December 29th.

BROKEN EMBRACES / LOS ABRAZOS ROTOS - damp squib

If BROKEN EMBRACES weren't by Almodovar, would it still be as highly praised by critics? I have great respect for Almodovar - I loved his crazy, transgressive early comedies and melodramas - TIE ME UP, TIE ME DOWN; WOMEN ON THE EDGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, and respected inestimably his more recent, mature, dramas - BAD EDUCATION, VOLVER. To my mind, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER and TALK TO HER are masterpieces. By contrast, BROKEN EMBRACES was unengaging, and sometimes, unforgivably, dull.

To be sure, BROKEN EMBRACES is as technically accomplished and well-acted as anything that Almodovar has ever done. And it contains all those classic Almodovar thematic concerns and audacious tricks. Within five minutes of opening, a blind screen-writer called Harry Caine (Lluis Homar) has picked up a pretty young girl and joyously fucked her on his couch. It's classic Almodovar - with a cheeky shot of a foot over a sofa replacing the typical Hollywood soft focus sex scene. Ten minutes later your into another classic Almodovar scene, as people come and go from Caine's flat, ringing the doorbell, like a British theatrical farce. Chief among them is Caine's production manager, Judit (Blanca Portillo), from the time when he was a sighted directer called Mateo Blanco. Evidently, she still carries a torch for him. Thirty minutes in and we get our mandatory Almodovar drugs scene, as Judit's son Diego (Tamar Novas) OD's. There's also the standard vengeful, creepy homosexual, in the shape of Ruben Ochandiano's Ray X.

But what does all this speak to? Certainly, there's no real reason to spend time with an OD'ing Diego. It's all a framing device for the heart of the story, which takes place in 1992 and is told in flashback by Mateo/Harry to Diego. Back then, Mateo had an affair with Lena, the leading lady in a movie rather similar to WOMEN ON THE EDGE. She (Penelope Cruz) was a failed actress, prostitute, and mistress of a rich, old industrialist called Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez). The story is about how the jealousy of Martel is abetted by his voyeuristic son and Judit, with tragic consequences.

That's it. I was amazed by how, well, THIN, the story really was. And how unengaged I was by it. Despite some energetic sex scenes, there is precious little sexual tension between Penelope Cruz' character and either of her lovers, and despite the fact that she was evidently a vulnerable and wronged women, for some reason I didn't feel any sympathy with her. The only character that really worked for me on a raw, gut level, was Blanca Portillo's jealous ex-lover Judit - the only really stand-out performance.

To be sure, Almodovar weaves a lot of intellectually interesting material around the hollow centre of the film. And for hardened cineastes this may be enough to sustain interest. The allusions to his own back catalogue, as well as other Hollywood and European classics and clever. The examination of double identity - Mateo Blanco/Harry Caine - Lena/Severine - the movie-within the movie - the taped tristes/the protagonist dubbing it - are all slippery, clever, and daring.

But as much as I appreciated all this on an intellectual level, my over-riding impression was still of a film that was below par for Almodovar, if not still well above the standard of your typical Hollywood fare.

BROKEN EMBRACES played Cannes 2009 and opened earlier this year in Spain, Belgium, France, Israel, Russia, Germany and Austria. It is currently on release in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands and opens next weekend in the UK. It is released in September in the Czech Republic, Norway, Croatia, Portugal, Brazil, Hungary and the Ukraine. It is released in October in Argentina, Italy,, Greece, Estonia and Mexico. It is released in the US in late November and in Australia in December.

[REC] - high concept Spanish horror

[REC] is a high concept horror flick by Spanish directors, Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. A reality TV presenter and her cameraman follow a fire crew to an apartment block late at night. Turns out the inhabitant of the attic is a demoniacally possessed, contagious near-zombie who has infected the building. The police cordon of the building and the inhabitants and camera crew are left to figure out what's going on. The story and action are deftly handled and the movie benefits from being filmed on location. But the concept of live action footage seems a bit old hat in the wake of CLOVERFIELD. Moreover, I think it's a bit weak to introduce such a juicy idea as possession and not follow through.

[REC] played Venice 2007 and was re;eased in Spain in 2007. It was released in Italy, Russia, Portugal, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Finland, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Japan, Greece, South Korea, Poland, Hong Kong, Mexico, Argentina, Singapore, Brazil and Turkey in 2008. It has been remade into the US film QUARANTINE and is available on DVD. [REC] 2 is due to be released later this year.

THE ORPHANAGE/EL ORFANATO - a supernatural thriller dripping with guilt

THE ORPHANAGE is a handsome, patient, supernatural thriller from debutant director Juan Antonio Bayona. A young mother returns to the orphanage in which she grew up, only to find that her own son has been abducted. She suspects a weird, fraudulent social-worker, and then connects her son's imaginary friends to the ghosts of the children she grew up with. In desperation she calls in a medium, only to tip her supremely rational husband into leaving her.

On one level, the movie plays a tense thriller that edges close to horror in a tour-de-force scene featuring Geraldine Chaplin as a medium sensing screaming children in a darkened house.

But the real heart of the movie lies in Belén Rueda's performance as the frightened, desperate, grief-stricken mother. Her performance, and indeed the entire film, drips in a sense of guilt and shame. The guilt of having been adopted and leaving behind her comrades; the guilt of whether she sufficiently loves her adopted child; the guilt of choosing to forget uncomfortable facts in her past.....

As I said, THE ORPHANAGE is a good movie. But the marketing campaign is rather misleading, playing as it does on Gulliermo del Toro's well-deserved reputation for richly imagined, genuinely horrific thrillers. THE ORPHANAGE is good but it's still some way off the sheer brutal horror of THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE let alone PAN'S LABRYNTH. Having said all that, it's definitely worth a look.

THE ORPHANAGE played Cannes, Toronto and Frightfest 2007. It opened in Sapin, Greece, Finland and the USA last year. It opened in Venezuela, Denmark, Colombia, Mexico, Germany, South Korea, Russia, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Brazil, Iceland, Argentina and Norway earlier this year. It is currently on release in Singapore, the UK and the Netherlands. It is released on DVD in April.

GOYA'S GHOSTS - less than the sum of its parts

Another day, another Pantheon director disappoints. Today it's the director of the truly great films ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, AMADEUS, MAN IN THE MOON and THE PEOPLE VERSUS LARRY FLYNT - Milos Forman. In each of these films, Forman brought a great character from history or fiction to life. The enigmas were explored and memorable cinema was created. In GOYA'S GHOSTS we have neither. Indeed, Goya remains a rather shadowy and frustrating character - naive, flaky, rather on the outskirts of the great events he is witness to. If the brutality of the Spanish inquisition, Napoleonic invasion of Spain and subsequent English invasion find their way into his work, we do not feel this emotional experience through the film. Indeed, were it not for the brutal sketches shown in the opening credits, one might be left wondering what all the fuss was about. What we are left with is a sort of watered down version of the dilemma of the artist, as shown to devestating effect in AMADEUS. We see Goya crawl to Royal patrons while simulateneously depicted them with unflattering truthfulness. But Forman handles this theme with a heavy-hand, self-consciously spoofing the relationship between Mozart and Joseph II in AMADEUS.

With Stellan Skarsgard's Goya an insubstantial and peripheral figure, where does the movie find its intellectual and emotional centre? The aim is surely to situate it in the relationship between Natalie Portman's Ines and Javier Bardem's Brother Lorenzo. Ines is a victim of the Spanish Inquisition and Lorenzo takes advantage of her in prison. Fifteen years later he has quite forgotten her in his success as a Napoleonic bureaucrat. When Goya drags in the now quite physically and emotionally disfigured Ines, Lorenzo packs her off to an asylum and tries to pack his illegitimate and politically embarassing daughter (also played by Portman) to America. This plot has more than a little in common with the Villefort plot in The Count of Monte Cristo.

I found this storyline rather unsatisfying. It is too fractured and pushed around by the political turmoil in the foreground and the frantic covering of so much thematic material. First we have the venality of the Church. Then the battle between science and religion. Religious fundamentalists are clearly bad. Torture is even worse - and the political allegory with Abu Ghraib is obvious. The invading Napoleonic troops are promised that the Spaniards will greet them with cheers and embrace freedom. This is clealy meant to mirror the American mission in the Iraqi war. Political regimes tumble over one another - yesterday's leaders are today's prisoners. There doesn't seem to be much meaning in any of it - and perhaps that is Forman's point.

Whatever Forman's ultimate vision for the film, it remains a confused and baggy monster whose many themes and plot machinations cannot disguise the lack of charismatic central character or tight plotting.

GOYA'S GHOSTS was released in Spain, Germany and Austria in 2006 and in the zech Republic, Poland, Israel, Sweden, Greece, Finland, the Netherlands, Serbia and Italy earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in Slovenia, Norway an d Belgium later in May. It opens in the US on July 20th, in France on July 25th and in Brazil on Septeber 7th.

PAN'S LABYRINTH/EL LABARINTO DEL FAUNO - Best film of 2006?

Sometimes the hardest reviews to write are for the movies which you just know are a yard faster than anything else you've seen. For me, PAN'S LABYRINTH is the most memorable, inventive, emotionally and visually scarring movie I have seen in 2006. The (in)famous UK reviewer, Mark Kermode, stood up before the screening and called the movie "the CITIZEN KANE of fantasy cinema". This made me, if anything, more sceptical about the film. Not because I don't value his opinion but because I hate someone laying this amount of hype on the shoulders of a movie just as I'm about to see it. How on earth could the movie possibly live up to such a description?

Short answer: it does. And then some. The problem is that I can describe how amazing the production design is; how elegant the editing; how atmospheric the photography; but I cannot make you feel the sense of complete immersion in a world that is threatening and brutal and evil. And be very clear, this is no kids movie. It inflicts much cruelty on its audience - forcing you to flinch at scenes of torture, body-horror and death. The cruelty steps beyond the immediate violence, though - it manifests itself in what I interpreted to be an incredibly nihilistic central message: the world is barbarous and cruel and evil acts may be punished but the innocent will also die. Worse still, there is no real refuge in childhood stories of magic and fairies. Barbarous cruelty also dominates the fantasy world and its rules are arbitrary and demanding. Maybe I am taking this too far: there is a glimmer of hope at the end. We are, after all, moral agents: we are able to do the right thing. But to one interpretation, there is no tangible benefit to doing so.

But back to the nuts and bolts. PAN'S LABYRINTH is the new film by director Guillermo del Toro (HELLBOY, THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE). It is set in Spain just after the civil war has ended, but as World War Two is still raging. A young girl who loves fairy-tales is travelling into the countryside with her heavily pregnant mother. Her stepfather is a vain, misogynistic, sadistic Fascist army officer who sees her mother as a vehicle to deliver the son he desires. The step-daughter is tempted by a faun into thinking that if she can just carry out three dangerous tests in a fantasy world she will be acknowledged as an immortal fairy princess and be spirited away to live with her dead father.

Finally, as with all truly magical cinematic experiences, it's really hard for me to explain why this movie affected me so much. I can only urge you to try and catch it at the cinema even if you wouldn't normally go for fantasy cinema. It is rare to find a movie that is so engrossing, so horrifying and yet so beautifully rendered.

PAN'S LABYRINTH played Cannes and London's Frightfest, 2006. It is currently on release in Spain, Mexico, France and Serbia. It opens in Belgium, Italy and the UK this weekend and in Australia, Russia and Singapore next weekend. The film opens in Canada and the US on December 29th. It opens in Norway in January, Germany in February, Japan in April and Turkey in May.

ANGOSTO or LA NOCHE DE LOS GIRASOLLES - what's Spanish for "yawn"?

ANGOSTO takes the move out of movie. It's apparently a Spanish thriller but it contained no thrills. Just a laborious, semi-clever but rather predictable plot, some nice photography on location among deserted Spanish villages and some fair acting. The story is that a raped woman's avenging husband skewers the wrong old man. A bent local cop agrees to get them off but his aged father-in-law is a hound-dog for the truth. This story is eked out over two hours and artificially split up into different segments. We see the story from the point of view of different characters, getting a little more back story each time and sometimes circling back over the same time code. I assume this narrative structure was designed to give us insight into the specific local customs and build up our sympathies with each of the characters. I just lost patience. This is one festival-circuit favourite that came across as more hype less substance.

ANGOSTO or LA NOCHE DE LOS GIRASOLLES opened in Spain in August and played Venice and London 2006. I have no clue if it will get a cinematic release any time soon in the UK.