"The Orphanage" made its illustrious debut at the Cannes Film Festival this year and, as its deeply unsettling story of mothers, children and ghosts unfolded on the screen, Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona heard a noise in the dark that gave him a panic.
"I heard people laughing," Bayona recalled with a moan. Then he shook his head and smiled: "Then we realized it was nervous laughter. They were so scared they were laughing at themselves. Then we knew it was OK."
"The Orphanage," originally released as "El Orfanato," opens in limited release in the U.S. on Friday and has been tapped as Spain's best foreign-language film submission for the 80th Annual Academy Awards, and that could help it appeal to audiences who typically recoil at anything perceived as a genre film. Reviewers have lauded the film's tale of grief, faith and shivering mystery at a seaside orphanage, and, in Spain, market research found that the film received its highest marks from women older than 40.
"We've made a horror movie for grannies," first-time screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez said. "Seriously, the film is difficult to describe to people. It's not a drama; it's not a horror film. But it is also both. The best thing is not to try too hard to describe it and to let people go into a theater and watch it unfold."
What exactly the audience sees on the screen, however, is a matter of debate. The film tells the tale of Laura (Belen Rueda of "The Sea Inside"), who spent part of her childhood at the Good Shepherd Orphanage and now, as a wife and mother, has returned to the shuttered old manor to reopen it with her husband as a center for ill and disabled youngsters. Her 7-year-old son (portrayed by Roger Princep) is spooked by the place but then meets some imaginary playmates. When he disappears on the clinic's opening day, Laura goes looking for him among the phantoms that are either in her house or in her mind.
Are the ghostly visions that follow real or a product of heaving grief? That is up to the audience. "That is what makes such a special film," says producer Guillermo Del Toro, the filmmaker who has shown a flair for fantastical tales with very human heartbreak and squirming Gothic menace with "Pan's Labyrinth" (which earned him an Oscar nomination for original screenplay) and "Hellboy."
