region 2 DVD. Optimum Releasing OPTD0756. time: 120 minutes plus extras in Spanish with English subtitles. Price: £17.99 (UK). Director/writer: Guillermo Del Toro. stars: Ariadna Gil; Ivana Baq; Sergi Lopez; Maribel Verdu; Doug Jones and Alex Angulo.

check out website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/

Once upon a time, a princess escaped from her underground kingdom, climbing up a long spiral stair to the upper world. But the sunlight blinded her and made her forget all about her life as a princess, her father and the kingdom underground. She lived as a mortal and finally died as a mortal.

But her father never forgot her. He had faith that she would return. Perhaps reborn as another mortal...



So opens a most extraordinary film. Set in Spain in 1944, the story concerns Carmen and her daughter Ofelia and their relationship with Capitan Vidal, who Carmen married after the death of her first husband and with whose child she is now pregnant.

He is not at all nice man. The first hint we have of that is when we see him and several of his soldiers, late at night, interrogating a couple of peasants caught in the hills around the mill in which he's currently living. They first shoot the older then repeatedly smashing his son in the face with the base of a bottle, ignoring their protests that they had only been hunting rabbits. After both are dead, his subordinate finds rabbits in their bag. Vidal's response? A shrug and an order to the officer to search more carefully next time...

Carmen, while afraid of him, is grateful to be under the protection of such a powerful man, despite the fact it's obvious he's only interested in her for the child, a son, she carries. The central character of the film, Ofelia - 11, head full of dreams, fostered by the books that are her only pleasure - is disconnected from 'real life', seeing magic all around her. Ofelia believes that if she wishes it, she can make things happen. She may be right, given her experiences throughout the film.

Her inner life is more important to her than anything else, with the possible exception of her mother, although even that relationship seems somehow disconnected. Ofelia questions nothing and accepts everything in a very childlike way. Understandable for a child of her time but a very dangerous thing in this perilous world.

I think it helps to have some idea of the context. The film is set after the Spanish Civil War and Vidal and his soldiers are involved in clearing out the rebels from the hills which I didn't discover until afterwards. If I've understood it correctly, they were falangists, operating on the side of Franco. I guess that makes them the bad guys. They certainly act that way, with remorseless, casual brutality. Vidal is accustomed to and comfortable with using torture to get answers.

In the mean time, Ofelia finds herself drawn into another world, one that exists alongside ours. She meets the faun (NOT Pan: the name was added to the title, apparently, to make it clear that it's about a faun as opposed to a fawn) who gives her the traditional three tasks to accomplish before the next full moon...

It's overwhelmingly a film about choices. Mercedes' choice not to kill. Ofelia's choice not to obey the faun's injunction about eating from the table and thus awakening the Pale Man (a truly nasty invention). Her choice to follow her own desires rather than do as her mother tells her and Vidal's choice to be the sort of man he is.

This is not a film for children. It's extremely dark, in both lighting and subject matter. A fairy tale in the original sense, primitive and brutal. There's no Disney fluffiness here, thank all the forgotten gods. The juxtaposition of the dark beauty and surreality of Ofelia's 'world' and the brutality of Capitan Vidal's is disorientating. There's a lot of violence, both casual and deliberate, torture and death, and the end...well, the final shot is satisfying, but you'll have to make up your own mind whether the initial fairy tale is true or not. Overall, it's a darkly compelling story, extremely well-acted and even the grotesque fantasy figures are completely believable. The fact that it's in Spanish (although sub-titled) adds to the alienness and otherworldly atmosphere for the non-Spanish speaker. It wouldn't have quite the same chilling effect in English.

The extra features are fascinating and are in English (at least, the three I watched were) which will be a relief for anyone who doesn't like sub-titles. Guillermo Del Toro talks about the film and its various elements, the myth, the music, shape and colour. It's an intriguing glimpse into the mind of an extraordinarily talented man.

Highly recommended for anyone not prone to nightmares and over 18.

Joules Taylor
http://www.wavewrights.com