The Orphanage ( El Orfanato ) , a Spanish film presented and produced by Pan's Labyrinth writer-director Guillermo del Toro, is that rarest of all cinematic marvels—a ripping good ghost story in the tradition of other paranormal thrillers like The Haunting, The Others and The Sixth Sense. Better—it delivers the requisite twists and turns but also has an emotionally complex ending that is deeply satisfying. Best—it's done with psychological effects and a minimum of gore. Good news: This one is safe for gore-a-phobics.
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Pictured: The Orphanage.
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The story focuses on Laura ( Belén Rueda, terrific and in nearly every scene ) a pretty blonde woman who, with her easygoing, patient husband Carlos ( Fernando Cayo ) , is living in what used to be the orphanage where she grew up. Laura and Carlos are remodeling this Victorian with the intention of becoming foster parents to handicapped children. In the meantime, they are raising their dark curly-haired adopted son Simón, who is HIV positive ( and has the serious countenance of other children stricken by severe illness ) . Simón has assorted imaginary friends that he loves to play games with. One day Laura is drawn into the game—a treasure hunt with clues that seems to point to something disturbing. An undercurrent of unease permeates the house as surely as the bad dreams of both Laura and her little boy.
Then, abruptly, during a lawn party welcoming the other children, Simón disappears. Did the child in the hideous scarecrow mask who locked Laura into the bathroom have something to do with it? Laura, who's temporarily in a wheelchair ( shown on the second floor in a suspense moment not unlike a similar one in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? ) , is determined to find out. She begins to figure out that the orphanage of her childhood hid a terrible secret and, perhaps, all its former residents weren't treated so well. In the film's most unnerving sequence, Geraldine Chaplin, as a medium, is brought in to conduct a séance. Then Laura begins to suspect that perhaps something from the paranormal world has spirited Simón away. Here, we get into Poltergeist territory and the film builds to its startling conclusion.
In the tradition of all great ghost story movies, a psychological breakdown accompanies the paranormal activity, and by the time the resolution approaches both elements have intertwined to a point where one is inseparable from the other. There are snatches of other ghost story movies in Sergio G. Sanchez's intricate script—The Others, The Exorcist, The Ring, The Sixth Sense and, again, lots of Poltergeist—and, like them, the importance of the mother-child relationship is also explored. Again, it's like those movies you end up feeling something other than fear. The Orphanage is the bravura directorial debut of Juan Antonio Bayona, who exhibits the same assured storytelling techniques of del Toro, his mentor. Expect to hear a lot of exciting buzz about this entertaining film. In Spanish with subtitles.
A haunting of an altogether different sort happens in The Man of My Life ( L'homme de sa vie ) , which is playing an exclusive engagement at the Siskel Center, 164 N. State, Dec. 28-Jan. 3. Into the sunny, languid summer in the French countryside a disturbance is about to come into the lives of Frédéric ( Bernard Campan ) and his comely blond wife, Frédérique ( Léa Drucker ) . The disturbance is named Hugo ( Charles Berling ) , the new neighbor that Frédéric has encountered during his morning run through the forest. At the urging of Frédérique, he invites Hugo to join them at a family dinner. The couple, along with their toddler, have family and friends staying for a vacation. During dinner, the attractive Hugo reveals that he is Swiss, a flight attendant and, in his words, 'a fag.' This information is all given in a very matter-of-fact, I-dare-you-to-challenge-me manner, but homosexuality is hardly an issue for this bourgeois group and no one challenges him.
Later, after much wine, Frédéric and Hugo continue to talk alone after Frédérique has gone to bed. When Hugo complains of the chill in the night air, Frédéric brings him a pull-over sweater as the two talk of relationships and love. Hugo tells Frédéric firmly that sharing your life is the ultimate destruction while Frédéric argues for love. At dawn Hugo departs, promising to return the sweater. Nothing physical has occurred and nothing that would be construed as a seduction but, nevertheless, nothing for either man will ever be the same.
Throughout the rest of the movie director Zabou Breitman ( who co-wrote the script with Agnés de Sacy ) returns repeatedly to this all-night conversation and—each time—new, tiny, intimate moments are revealed. Without a touch or a glance, it's clear that the emotional intimacy that the two men have shared with one another has awakened something neither has previously acknowledged—a growing awareness of same-sex attraction for Frédéric and a desire for a relationship for Hugo. The chill is first felt in Frédéric's bedroom when he loses interest in Frédérique. She suspects the cause but there's nothing overt to point to. Later, Hugo, the avowed loner, will find himself coming to terms with some deep-seated anger and loneliness as his father is dying.
This exquisite, sophisticated relationship movie is chock full of scenes ripe with dramatic intensity but they're presented with a minimum of histrionics, an eye for the telling detail and a tender lyricism rare for a film whose subject matter would usually be tossed off as nothing more than a variation on the usual love triangle. But The Man of My Life is much more complex than that puny description implies and cuts much deeper because of it. In French with subtitles. www.siskelcenter.com
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