El orfanato
J A Bayona (2007)
Probably because Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) is executive producer, The Orphanage, written by Sergio G Sánchez and directed by Juan Antonio Bayona (his first feature), is both getting a general release and being treated as an artistic psychological drama – rather than with the condescension often meted out to a ghost-horror story. In fact, it’s the lack of connection between familiar genre effects and what’s going on in the mind of the heroine that makes the film shallow and disappointing. There are ominous clouds, bare black branches blowing in the wind and creaking doors from the word go – well before they are justified in terms of the story being told. The motivation of Laura to buy and live with her husband and their adopted son Simón in the orphanage where she spent her early childhood, before her own adoption, is never clear. (Does she want to repay a debt to society, recapture the past, or exorcise bad memories?) With its inky colours, the film is lacking in light and shade visually as well as emotionally. It’s pitched so relentlessly high and the characters are so thin that, by the time Simón goes missing, it seems to be just one more thing going wrong. And when (many months later) it’s suggested that a medium visit the orphanage to try and help solve Simón’s disappearance, the question is posed to the main characters as if this would be an intolerable offence to their rationalism. Given what’s already been happening, that seems the least of their problems.
The eventual explanation of events, although not original, works well enough and the film has some undeniably shocking moments – but these are mostly produced by images that are physically repellent rather than disturbing on any deeper level. The most powerful sequence involves a road accident and the gruesomely realistic description of its effects. The cutting between characters in animal masks and Down’s syndrome faces, at an open day when Laura is applying to have new children join the family in the orphanage, is uncomfortable in the wrong way. Roger Princep is appealing as Simón: the openness of his face increases his aura of mystery. The adult actors work hard but, with so little to work with, become monotonous in proportion to the size of their roles – Belén Rueda as Laura therefore has by far the hardest job. Geraldine Chaplin makes an effective guest appearance even though her fey, spectral quality makes her close to typecast as the medium. Fernando Cayo is Laura’s long-suffering and understandably miserable-looking husband.
21 March 2008
