European Films

Things are less than sunny in the riveting drama La noche de los girasoles (Night of the Sunflowers), the feature debut from Spanish director Jorge Sanchez-Cabezudo. Presented in six overlapping chapters each with a different point of view and paying equal attention to thrills and character, the film might be a bit too sophisticated for all-out horror fans but will find fertile ground with everyone else. Neatly scripted and acted by perfectly cast character actors rather than stars, the film is a pleasure to watch from beginning to end and makes its two hours fly by in no time. Late-night programming in cinemas across Europe and beyond seems more than likely; horror festivals will certainly bite.

 

A 22-year-old girl is found dead in a sunflower field in the prologue of Girasoles. In an overhead shot, we see a man get away in his car, a car that looks strikingly like the one of the "Man in the Hotel", the title of the first chapter. In the second chapter, simply titled "The Cave Experts", we meet Pedro (Mariano Alameda) and Esteban (Carmelo Gomez), who are asked to explore a recently discovered cave in a small Spanish village. Esteban's girlfriend Gabi (Judith Diakhate) has also come along and waits in the car for the two to come back from their expedition, when something terrifying happens to her, something related to what we have already seen in the previous chapter. The third and fourth chapters introduce another four men integral to the tale: two live in mutual animosity in a ghost-village of which they are the last inhabitants, and two are local police officers who will be called upon to investigate matters and who are related by marriage.

The screenplay, written by the director, allows for the same events to be seen from different angles, an approach that is often effective though Sanchez does occasionally come close to revealing his cardhouse-construction for the fragile literary device that it is. The main ingredient that will keep audiences glued to the screen is the impeccably directed cast, and especially veteran actor Celso Bugallo (Mar adentro/The Sea Inside), who plays the suspicious police officer Amadeo, whose daughter Raquel (Nuria Mencia) is married to his opportunistic partner Tomas (Vicente Romero).

 

Though not exactly sketchily presented, Bugallo, Romero, Gomez and Alameda know how to suggest full-bodied characters rather than thriller clichés. The script also adds some nice touches not often found in the genre, including a mayor who hopes that the town's tourism might be revived if the cave is interesting enough for amateur cave explorers, and the hilariously uptight love-hate relationship between the two last inhabitants of the ghost-village. The script taps nicely into the village versus city-dweller divide without taking sides, and covers up some of its more incredulous moments (of which, thankfully, there are very few) with strong acting and swift editing. Nighttime exteriors are crisp, and cinematography and production design perfect, especially considering the small scale of the production.

 

 

Buy the DVD at: dvdGO.es. 

 

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