Pan's Labyrinth

Mexican fantasist Guillermo del Toro (whose debut Cronos screens in our Mexican retrospective) fashioned a tour-de-force mix of fairy tale and fascist nightmare and had an art-house hit with the ambitious Pan’s Labyrinth, winner of a trio of Oscars (for Cinematography, Art Direction, and Makeup). The film is set in a rural backwater of Franco’s Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War; its young protagonist is Ofelia, a bookish schoolgirl who escapes into the labyrinth of her fantasies — marvellously, menacingly rendered — after her widowed mother weds a sadistic officer leading the campaign against Republican guerrillas still operating in the area. “Its inventive visuals [were] inspired partly by Goya’s ‘black paintings’ . . . Its imaginative assurance confirms del Toro as one of contemporary cinema’s most rewarding purveyors of fantasy” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out) “Pan’s Labyrinth is his finest achievement so far and a film that already has the feel of something permanent. Like his friend and colleague Alfonso Cuarón, whose astonishing Children of Man opened [the same year] . . . del Toro is helping to make the boundary separating pop from art, always suspect, seem utterly obsolete (A. O. Scott, New York Times). Colour, 35mm, in Spanish with English subtitles. 120 mins.