EL ORFANATO (THE ORPHANAGE)

Spain, 2007, 103 minutes, Colour.
Belen Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Princep, Mabel Rivera, Monserrat Carulla, Geraldine Chaplin.
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona.

This is an eerie ghost story reminiscent in many ways of that other fine Spanish ghost story, The Others, with Nicole Kidman. This time the focus is on Belen Rueda as Laura, who spent her younger years in the orphanage and has now returned with her devoted husband and seven year old adopted son in order to open it up again to young children. While everything seems sunny, the little boy is sick and plays with invisible friends. One day he discovers another ‘friend’ in a cave by the seaside. At a masked party for prospective clients, the little boy seems to menace his mother and then disappears.

The film builds its atmosphere, relying on lighting, editing and suggestion rather than by any effects.

When a former employee, looking particularly sinister, visits, suspicions are aroused and various clues, including some home movies of the time when Laura was a girl reveal a new story.

It is Laura who has to hold the film together. She becomes increasingly morbid and frantic about her son as the months pass. Finally, she consults a medium (Geraldine Chaplin) who, against the advice of her rational psychologist and of her husband, tells her that she must first believe and then she will see. The rest of the film is what she sees, what she discovers and what she decides to do.

As with eerie films like The Innocents, The Sixth Sense and The Others, we enter into the mind of someone who has ‘other world’ experiences where it is hard for the audience to know what is real and what is not – and create their own film, so to speak.

This is a very good example of this kind of horror by suggestion film.

1.An atmospheric story? Atmosphere of horror? Death and ghosts?

2.The orphanage itself, the exteriors, interiors? The lighthouse? The caves? The sea, the beach? The town – ordinary? The musical score and moods and climaxes?

3.The opening, the children playing the game, Laura and her participation, the other children, catching her? Laura to be adopted – happy?

4.The adult Laura, her marriage to Carlos, adoption of Simon? His HIV-positive condition? The decision to return and buy the orphanage? The plans to take in children? The bond between Carlos and Laura, playing the piano, asleep, Simon and his nightmares, Laura going to him, the story of the invisible light and the light from the lighthouse, going to the beach, the caves, Simon and his imaginary friends, the parents’ concern, his finding Thomas in the cave, the promise that he would come to play in the house? The stones to indicate the way?

5.The arrival of Benigne, her sinister appearance, the file about Simon, her later appearance in the town, suddenly being run over? The doll? The revelation about her past, working at the orphanage, the photos, the home movies, her son and his disfigurement, the mask, the children taunting him and playing the game, his death, her vengeance?

6.The party, the potential clients, the masks, Laura and her being terrorised, the pursuit, her being locked in the room, frantic? Simon’s disappearance, the search, her reactions, her injury on the beach? Carlos and his trying to help?

7.The issue of when did Laura die? On the beach, before the children appeared, after? Her mental state and the possibility of her creating the characters?

8.The police, the search, the passing of time, Laura continually frantic, the effect on herself and Carlos, Benigne’s death and the clues?

9.Pilar, the psychiatrist, her trying to help? The lecture on Carl Jung, the doppelgangers?

10.The intervention of the psychologist, Aurora as the medium, the set-up with her assistant, the electronic equipment, hypnosis, Aurora as the medium, going back into the past, her assistant tracking her on the map of the house, Pilar coming to observe, Carlos and his scepticism? Aurora sensing the children, going into the room?

11.Pilara and the voice of reason, Carlos and his rational approach, Aurora and her telling Laura that believing comes before seeing?

12.The discovery of the dolls, the discovery of the bodies, the five children, their story?

13.Carlos, Laura and her tension, talking to him in bed, his being in the bathroom, the pressure on him, his decision to leave?

14.The re-enactment of the past, Laura putting on the uniform, making the beds, making the exact meal as in the film, the indication of the signs, the crashing window, the knob?

15.The cellar, the discovery of Simon, alive and dead, his invitation to stay with the children?

16.The themes of eternal childhood, imaginary friends – and the references to Peter Pan? Laura as Wendy, wanting to stay and tell stories to the children?

17.The aftermath, the information on the gravestone, Carlos’s visit – and the deaths of Laura and Simon, the tribute to the five children?