El laberinto del fauno / The Labyrinth of the Faun / Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection
on November 12th, 2018 at 09:04
Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is an 11-year old girl who, as the movie begins, is reluctantly moving to the mountains of Spain with her pregnant mother to be with her new step-father, Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez). The time is 1944, and the fascists have won the Spanish Civil War, but there are still some Communists rebels holding up in the mountains. It's Vidal's job to capture them, but he'd rather just slaughter them all.
Thrust into a violent and unfamiliar world, Ofelia spends much of her time reading fairy tales, and when she sees a strange bug fly into her room and land on her leg, she's not terribly surprised to discover that it's really a fairy that has been sent to bring her into the forest. Following the small flying creature, Ofelia is lead through an ancient labyrinth and down into a deep well. At the bottom she meets a faun who reveals that she's not just an ordinary girl, but the daughter of a king. In order to be able to return to her kingdom however, the faun must be sure that Ofelia is pure and hasn't been tainted with the curse of mortality. In order to prove herself she has to accomplish three tasks before the next full moon, only days away. Each one is more dangerous than the last.
All the while Captain Vidal searches for the rebels, cutting the locals rations so they won't have any food to share and torturing or killing anyone he suspects of helping them. With Ofelia knowing that one of the maids is helping the resistance, and her mother's pregnancy taking a turn for the worse, the girl is left with no one to turn to and no one to help her.
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