Search Results: "The Orphanage"

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The Orphanage has one indelible image, and that's plenty. It also has a sly current of grief and healing that hits home mostly on reflection, after cold recognitions and resonances sink in.

Directed by Spaniard J.A. Bayona and written by Sergio G. Sánchez, The Orphanage arrived in the United States under the banner of producer Guillermo del Toro, and it suffers from the expectations that name carries. Del Toro's Spanish-language films are compact, textured, and rich with meaning. Cronos (1993) is an alluring, lethal metaphor-dispensing machine, while Pan's Labyrinth (2006) has the ageless authenticity of a folk tale, among its many other merits. The Devil's Backbone (2001) most closely resembles The Orphanage in his oeuvre, but with so much attention paid to milieu — physical, social, historical — it transcends its obvious genre; its spectral elements become nearly secondary.

Bayona's movie is merely a good ghost story, which is no small thing, but it ain't Guillermo del Toro. While the acclaimed Mexican writer/director is fundamentally a symbolist, The Orphanage approaches its story through the emotional prism of its lead character.

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