Friday, January 11, 2008

Movie review: The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

In which a child's game becomes an experiment in terror.

By John P. Meyer

The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

Laura purchases her beloved childhood orphanage with dreams of restoring and reopening the long abandoned facility as a place for disabled children. Once there, Laura discovers that the new environment awakens her son's imagination, but the ongoing fantasy games he plays with an invisible friend quickly turn into something more disturbing. Upon seeing her family increasingly threatened by the strange occurrences in the house, Laura looks to a group of parapsychologists for help in unraveling the mystery that has taken over the place.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

Thanks to the AFI Dallas folks, I got a chance to take in The Orphanage a couple of months ago at a special screening - the sort of thing you, too, would be able to participate in if only you were on their mailing list.

Anyhow, AFI Dallas CEO and artistic director Michael Cain introduced the film to the packed auditorium and in his opening remarks thanked Loyd Cryer (head honcho of Texas Frightmare Weekend) for his organization's assistance in making the advance screening opportunity possible. (The 3rd annual Texas Frightmare Weekend is coming up on Feb. 21-24: mark your calendars.)

Spanish director Juan Antonio (J.A.) Bayona benefited from the producer-credited patronage of Guillermo del Toro during the making and marketing of The Orphanage, and the finished product certainly bears the mark of that dark and imaginative auteur. If I'd seen this movie without being aware of its directorial attribution, I might have taken it for a lost film of del Toro's Devil's Backbone period - before he got his hands on big Hollywood bucks. It's stylish, unsettling and laced with leap-from-your-seat scares.

Working from an intelligent and diabolically clever script by Sergio G. Sánchez, Bayona presents the melancholy and ultimately tragic tale of Laura (Belén Rueda), raised in a seaside orphanage where the kids are treated with caring and affection - most of them, anyway. Grown to adulthood and now a happily married mom, Laura - along with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and young son Simón (Roger Princep) - returns to the abandoned facility to make it her home. She even has plans to reopen the place as a boarding house for a new generation of needy children.

Laura - from a kid's eye view - in front of the orphanage

The upbeat effect of the beautiful and romantic setting (green lawns, ocean vistas, antique lighthouse) is counterbalanced by the baroque, brooding architecture of their new home and the delicate medical condition of Simón, whose days on earth may be numbered by virtue of his ailment, regardless of the stabilizing pharmaceutical regime on which he has been placed. Laura and Carlos are determined bring as much joy and happiness as they can into the life of their fragile son for as long as God and the fates allow.

To this end, they are indulgent but watchfully cautious when Simón cultivates the friendship of an imaginary chum he refers to as Tomás, whom he first "meets" in a darkened corner of a seaside cavern complex. (Note to beachfront residents: beware of sea level caves at all but the lowest of tides.)

The subplot thickens with the unsettling appearance of a sinister social worker who knows more than seems possible about the history of the property and its residents - not to mention Simón. This mysterious old woman may, in fact, hold the key that unlocks the secret past of the orphanage, where dirty deeds were done that have been forgotten by most of the living - though not the dead.

Tomás holds the key to something - but what?

After Simón disappears under the most mysterious of circumstances (he goes missing in the midst of a well-attended garden party for the parents of prospective new tenants), the movie enters its extended angst-ridden second half, wherein the desperate Laura's insane maternal resolve competes against her husband's (and the police's, and everyone else's) fatalistic acceptance of the fact that Simón is probably gone for good. In order to solve the puzzle of what's become of her son she delves into the realm of Jung and doppelgängers and pseudoscience, eventually calling on a team of parapsychology-trained field operatives guided by a psychic named Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin, speaking Spanish like a native - or so it sounds to me).

Aurora, spirit medium to the parapsychology crowd

Judging by - among a host of other indicators - the terrible banging on the walls (reminiscent of The Haunting), the ghost hunters become convinced that the joint is indeed haunted, but their efficacy in uncovering anything that might lead to the discovery of Simón's whereabouts leaves much to be desired.

One disturbing piece of the puzzle involves the imaginary and/or actual presence of the child Tomás, who during his short life wore a head-encompassing sackcloth, a la Joseph Merrick ("The Elephant Man"). The hunt for Tomás' "little room" becomes the focus of Laura's climactic efforts, during which she resurrects a child's game from her past (along with some of the actual children) to help her discover the terrible truth.

Deeper than your average ghost tale, The Orphanage deals with uncomfortably un-spectral issues that will prove unsettling to many - issues such as the illness of a child and the inability of even the most qualified and attentive of parents to keep kids from harm. It also makes the case (with chilling persuasiveness) that madness - or death - can be a beautiful refuge from reality. To top it all off, this movie ranks second only to The Mist for the darkest ending in recent cinema history.

Laura revisits the games of her childhood. Uh oh.

The sonic landscape is such a big part of the experience of this film that I suggest you give up any thought of waiting for the DVD - you'll want to sit in a darkened auditorium decked out with Dolby surround (or THX equivalent) to benefit from the full impact of the movie's scare tactics. In such a setting the atmosphere may become so tense (as it did during our screening at the Angelika) that the sudden return of a restroom-visiting patron to the theater at just the right (wrong?) time may elicit a startled gasp from audience members.

AND WHY NOT?: "You mustn't fear parallel perception." - parapsychology professor to Laura

THEN GOD HELP US ALL: "Seeing is not believing - it's the other way around." - Aurora to Laura

MAYBE NOT, BUT I AM: "Where are you? I'm not afraid." - Laura to ghost kids

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