My 99 Cents

Pan’s Labyrinth is a film for anyone who preferred the older, scarier versions of fairy tales. You know, where Cinderalla’s step-sisters slice their feet up to make the glass slipper fit (and how does the Prince know they’re frauds? Why, the gushing blood of course!) . Or the version where Hansel and Gretel, turned out of their home to starve in the woods, barely escape the old woman’s oven.

Only feral, vaguely menacing woodland creatures and weird insect-fairies properly reflect the bewildering world of this beautiful, disturbing film, which looks at the horrors of fascist Spain in 1944 from a child’s perspective.

The young actress Ivana Baquero plays Ofelia, a little girl whose widowed mother has married a military Captain in Franco’s army. The (pregnant) mother and daughter find themselves re-settled in an abandoned mill converted into an anti-guerrilla outpost, with Ofelia’s new, brutal step-father in charge.

While this is a story about a child, it is not a movie for kids. The film is unsparing in its depiction of violence. An early scene where the Captain suspects two local farmers of subversion will have you squirming. This terrorism informs Ofelia’s dreamworld, filling it with wild, demanding and powerful spirits who she can just barely control. These imaginary bug-sprites, fauns and frog-demons allow her to overlay chaos and powerlessness with her own parallel narrative of heroism and adventure and possible escape. The movie also reveals how limited this defense is.

The best images? A mandrake root that squeels like a baby and which Ofelia uses in a spell to try and ease her mother’s dangerous pregnancy; a faun, stranger than anything this side of Jean Cocteau; the enormous, clicking dragon-fly that seems to follow Ofelia on her travels into the forest. A naked, nightmare figure who sits alone in a vast room, head down, waiting for children (this one will definately show up in my sleep).

See this movie, though I really mean it about the violence. The grave, dreamy Ofelia is wonderful, and its a fascinating exploration of the mysterious ways people re-imagine the world in order to survive it.

Next time on my 99 cents: My Oscar picks n pans (no labyrinths).

Don’t miss live-oscar-blogging from right here in my star-crossed apt on Sunday Feb 25th!

The biggest celebs will once again show for our infamous “99 cent after-party” (choke on that Vanity Fair)! The Shmoos will be here (score!). Even Britney can’t out-bald these…thingie blobs. And once they get drinkin? It’s cell-phone limo shots of panty-less Shmoos all over the tabloids, for sure.