Two Movies in Spanish that Everyone Should See

The last two movies I have seen are both in Spanish. The first called the Fawn's Labyrinth is a story about a young girl in Fascist Spain, during the civil war. The movie is from a Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro, who I had not heard of before. When I first heard about it I thought it was a strange mix, a fantasy that is rated R.

A young girl and her mother come to an outpost of Franco's army, because the mother has taken up with the commander of the outpost. She is an intense reader and she especially likes fantasy. As the story develops the commander turns out to be violent and cruel and the young girl increasingly gets brought into a fantasy community which is lodged in a tree near the house they are staying in. She is identified as the princess of fantasy land and will be allowed to return if she completes three tasks. The characters are all quite interesting. In the fantasy world they are unique - quite different, some repulsive, but all interesting. In the real world - again they are all drawn out well. The commander is especially clearly established - consistently violent and cruel - bent on control. The partisans, who eventually overrun the outpost, are a study in contrast to the commander but not drawn as especially nobel. This is not a children's movie.

Volver (to return) is a movie by Pedro Almodavar. It is a story about two families of women, men are only incidental to the plot. It begins with a scene of a group of women busily tending to their family graves. This is a movie that is a mix of comedy and drama. The basic plot revolves around the death of an aunt of Penolope Cruz and her sister. The two women's mother reappears, although both had thought she had been killed in a fire. As the story develops, the mother's return, whcih is first thought to be a spirit, is quite real. It turns out that the woman who was killed in the fire is the mother of a close friend who was having an affair with the sister's father. At the same time, Cruz's daughter, kills her father when he tries to attack her and Cruz has to deal with the body.

Both movies were a great way to spend a couple of hours - the stories are captivating, the characters are well developed and work well together and the cinematography is excellent. Fawn's Labyrinth was nominated for Best Foreign Film in this year's Oscars.