13/11/2008

Spain continues to export horror hits. After Balaguerò and Fresnadillo (to name but two), debut filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona’s publicly and critically acclaimed The Orphanage [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – a domestic box office hit with €25m (against a budget of just €3m) and winner of seven Goyas – has been nominated for European Film Awards.

In Italy, the film is being released tomorrow on 200 screens by Key Films/Lucky Red.

This story of few special effects and much atmosphere – shot, according to the director, “in the classical style that I learned from Alfred Hitchcock thrillers” – centres on Laura (Belén Rueda of The Sea Inside [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). Before being adopted, she spent a happy childhood in the orphanage of the title (creaky, large and isolated, as tradition dictates).

She decides to return with her husband and son in tow, to transform it into an orphanage for handicapped children. But her son immediately starts playing with disturbing invisible friends the disappears suddenly. What horrible secrets do those rooms hide?

“European fantasy films are the best in the world. We are more unconventional than our American counterparts,” added the director, whose producer was none other than Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, behind such highly imaginative works as Pan’s Labyrinth [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile].

“I met him at the Sitges Festival,” said Bayona, who pretended to be a journalist in order to speak to Del Toro. From that moment on, “I won over his esteem by showing him by shorts. He gave me a lot of freedom, the same that he was guaranteed by Pedro Almodovar, who produced The Devil’s Backbone”.

The friendship between the young debut filmmaker and the Mexican icon was also fed by their shared love of cinema. “I feel indebted to my country’s film tradition. Many people saw in my film things that were similar to The Others, but both Amenábar and I were inspired by the atmospheres of The Boarding School, a film very much ahead of its time by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador”.

Other films that inspired Bayona include Carlos Saura’s Raise Ravens. “Later I realised it was more a political film than a horror film, but it is tied to my childhood nightmares. This is why I wanted Geraldine Chaplin to play the medium, to create a kind of bridge between The Orphanage and cinema of the past,” said Bayona.

Bayona will soon direct the Hollywood film (which Del Toro will also produced) Hater, “on an epidemic of hate and fear that takes over America”.

(Translated from Italian)