BlissAndConversation.com

Reviewing Your Life On Stage and Screen

How often do we go to a theatre to escape the problems and mundanities of everyday life?  How often do we come out of the theatre talking about what we saw, what it meant and, specifically, what it meant to us and how it made us feel about ourselves in the world as we see it?  This series is a contribution to that dialogue.  We hope you’ll add your comments to reviewing your life on stage and screen.

Belen Rueda as Laura 

         “Peter Pan” meets “The Turn of the Screw” in this exquisitely made Spanish ghost/suspense story, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona from Sergio G. Sanchez’s original screenplay.

            Laura (Belen Rueda) brings her doctor husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their adopted child Simon (Roger Princep), an adorable cherub who is desperately ill with AIDS, to a gothic mansion which was once an orphanage.  Laura lived there until she was adopted at age 7 and has returned to transform her beloved childhood home into a refuge for sick children.

            Simon is an imaginative child who has fantasy playmates and, in a cave on the shore near the house, he makes one more, Tomas.  He leaves a trail of seashells for Tomas to follow to their home.  The next morning Laura finds them outside her door.  Also outside her door is Benigna (Montserrat Carulla), an old woman who says she is a social worker and has come to discuss Simon’s care.  Laura sends her away but that night, following a sound on the grounds, she encounters Benigna in an out building.

            Strange things keep happening, climaxing at a colorful festival Laura gives for prospective students and their families.  Simon refuses to go down, begging Laura to come with him to the little house of Tomas.  She tries to postpone it and they have a fight, resulting in her striking him.  Later, searching for Simon, she is attacked by a child in a hood.  In the garden the guests wear masks which makes it impossible for Laura to find her child.

            Months pass and there is no sign of Simon.  A ghastly car crash reveals information about Benigna, who once lived at the Orphanage with her deformed son Tomas who always wore a mask.  Aurora, a medium, played by Geraldine Chaplin, explores the house in a stunning extended scene of technical virtuosity.

Belen Rueda grounds Laura in the everyday characterization of a loving, if fragile, wife and mother.  Her large dark eyes and delicate sensitivity reflect an openness to other worlds even as her devotion to her doctor husband and his scientific point of view keep one foot in the mundane world. The film makes the supernatural elements as real to us as they are to Laura , as she listens more and more breathlessly to other voices.  Just as in “The Turn of the Screw”, we’re not totally certain how much is meant to be a ghost story and how much is in Laura’s mind, as she struggles to cope with her lost child and the lost children of her child hood, reminiscent of “Peter Pan”.

            “The Orphanage” is not totally satisfactory.  This story doesn’t rank with “The Turn of the Screw”, “The Others” or “The Sixth Sense” in terms of piercing intensity.  But it’s very scary, very Spanish in its gothic baroqueness and memorably chilling in its sub-text of adoption as a metaphor for the children who disappeared during the Franco regime.

         Make this movie work for you by being aware of how often we embroider memories and facts to clothe our lives in the costumes of our choice.  Be aware of how important a part fantasy plays in our subconscious and explore the places from which it comes.