Two films:The Orphanage and Let the Right One In at The Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London
Two films: The Orphanage and Let the Right One In at The Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London Two films about abused youth, bizarre, empty canvasses filled with emotional blancmange, manipulative, bare and yet in some sense beguiling. The Orphanage (dir Juan Antonio Bayona, 2008) seems to me to be more of the usual politically correct tripe that Spain is capable of, mixing gore, sentiment, emotional manipulation, spurious anti-fascism and not a lot of blood in the manner of Guilermo Del Torros even though this film isn't quite up to his usual high standards (unsurprisingly he happens to be executive producer of The Orphanage ). The orphanage is a place where unloved children are placed, usually to be abused (who wrote this script?) and some of those children turn up later thanks to a passing expert on the paranormal. The Paranormal, Catholic Spain viewed through a modern day agnostic filter and lugubrious long shots of the gloomy orphanage, tripe about kids murdered in th