The Orphanage

Ever since the screening of Cronos during the International Critics Week in 1993, Guillermo del Toro has continued to affirm the singularity of his world and the infallible magic of his special effects. It’s not surprising then, that he’s chosen to mentor and produce a young Spanish filmmaker, renowned for his brilliant video clips, and encouraged him to work within genre cinema—at once effective and personal, fantastic and emotive. The most admirable (and surprising) achievement of The Orphanage lies in the sensibility of its treatment and in the sincerity of its performances (carried out brilliantly by the prodigious Geraldine Chaplin and Belén Rueda, who made her debut with The Sea Inside). Indeed, it’s impressive to witness how this young and daring 26 year old transforms a classic ghost story, complete with a haunted house, into a deeply moving ode to motherly love. The story effectively borrows form the conventions of the genre, departing slightly in order to touch upon unexpected human truths.

Although the supernatural abounds in its images, these still evoke the human dimensions of the situation, and attain a perfect fusion of Grand Guignol and psychological drama. In its ensemble, The Orphanage can be seen as the introspective journey of a mother who tests the limits of her love for her son.

And, to conclude, I will never forget the 20 minute round of applause that The Orphanage received during its world premiere at the International Critics’ Week: Guillermo “Memo” del Toro carrying J. A. Bayona in front of a teary-eyed Geraldine Chaplin, in the midst of a memorable standing ovation! An extraordinary moment that attests to the film’s superb quality, its exceptional ability to combine technical perfection with a profound human dignity.

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BERJON

The Orphanage - El Orfanato

Sangre de mi sangre
(Padre Nuestro)

Christopher Zalla (Kisumu, Kenya) spent much of his youth overseas and worked for nine summers as a commercial salmon fisherman in Alaska’s Behring Sea. Zalla received his MFA with honors in directing from Columbia University’s graduate film program, where he served as a teaching assistant and the faculty awarded him a full research assistant fellowship for merit as a top student. Prior to Sangre de mi sangre, he wrote Marching Powder for Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment. Zalla is fluent
in Spanish and lives in New York City.

Sangre de mi sangre

Déficit
García Bernal’s first feature as a director is a modest but mostly effective addition to the countryhouse- get-together subgenre, in which he plays the hedonistic twenty something son of a wealthy politician currently being investigated for corruption. Inviting friends to the family villa, he’s torn between keeping an eye on the druggy antics of his younger sister’s pals, larking around with his buddies, and chatting up an Argentine beauty while hoping his girlfriend won’t return home too soon. Needless to say, disaster looms... The film is always aware of just how much the privileged protagonist is dependent on (and too often neglectful of) the services of domestic staff far poorer than he; and as the mood becomes darker towards the end, the actor-director proves himself adept not only at eliciting strong performances from his young cast but at handling some tricky shifts in tone.

GEOFF ANDREW
Taken from Time Out magazine.

Déficit

Silent Light

This in one of those classic major statement films in which an up-and-coming auteur tries to consolidate his reputation for once and for all. The ploy doesn’t always work, but in Reygadas’ case something truly extraordinary has emerged. In Silent Light he abandons his first two films’
sometimes calculated outrage quotient and goes for something deeper and more delicate… Silent Light is one of the more mature and thoughtful recent films about adultery: it judges Johan’s affair neither negatively nor positively, treating it simply as a fact of his life that he’s prepared to deal with and that brings him great happiness. The film also makes clear the intensity of the sexual passion involved: here is a rare work that treats middle-aged sex between ordinary- looking people seriously, and photographs it beautifully… Even if you can’t buy into the religious dimension of Silent Light it’s hard to remain unmoved-not lest by the exalting spectacle of a promising director making the transition to true mastery.

Excerpts from Jonathan Romney’s critique
published in Sight & Sound magazine.

Silent Light - Luz Silenciosa

El Pasado

Filmmaker Hector Babenco has always felt an affinity for the marginalized: the abandoned, dispossessed, criminals, vagabonds and inmates. Before he began directing films, he spent 7 years traveling around the world and working as an extra on a number of productions. In 1969 he settled in Brazil. He has since directed more than ten award-winning features, making him perhaps the most successful and versatile filmmaker of the post-cinema novo generation. Heavily vested in the power of cinema to represent reality and to open up an ethical dimension from which to examine contemporary ills, Babenco has produced poignant works which speak to the truth of human suffering and perseverance. Without flaunting a political agenda or appealing to the sentimental, he has turned his camera on the problems that devastate Latin American societies –corruption, violence and inequality– and created unforgettable characters who defy a Manichaean understanding of the world; products, very much of a society that allows them no way to live, that denies their existence and shoves them into the grimmest corners of the country.

With his most recent film, The Past, Babenco brings us the story of a young man who divorces his wife after 12 years of marriage. The protagonist attempts to put his life back together but finds himself constantly harassed by his ex-wife. Featuring the multifaceted Gael Garcia Bernal, the film marks yet another exciting new direction for this talented filmmaker.

MARA FORTES

The Past - El Pasado