Whilst this is in no way a poorly made film, it is rather self indulgent, nothing like as good as Spirit of the Beehive made 10 years before and missing its last third. Talk of 'childhood innocence' and 'poetic interpretation' should have made me more wary but the earlier film had made a certain impression upon me and I was intrigued. Unfortunately where that film successfully merged the 'horror' of Boris Karloff and his 'monster', with the shadows of the Spanish Civil War and the aforementioned childhood innocence, this falls way short. That little happens before it suddenly stops at a crucial point does not in any way help a film that has relied all the time on our finding the not so innocent child beguiling and her partially absent father fascinating. Clearly as a non Spaniard I am missing some crucial nuance but hey.
Review of El Sur
