His leading cast
wields some genuinely lovely moments out of the unruly script. As well as some
genuinely disturbing ones. Black
Bread isn’t quite what I think the filmmakers hoped it would
be, but it’s enough. It’s entertaining, sometimes intriguing and worth a rental
at the very least.
------
A man is attacked in the Catalan woods, brutally murdered by a cloaked
assailant; his son, in the back of their horse-drawn wagon, is driven over a
cliff and left to die. Found by his friend Andreu (a terrific Francesc
Colomer), the boy breathes out the name of a ghost in his final moments:
Pitorliua.
It’s an incredibly dramatic opening to
Agustí Villaronga’s 2010 award-winning adaptation of Emili Teixidor’s novel.
Set in the years immediately following Franco’s crushing victory, Black Bread is not just another
story, similar to Pan’s Labyrinth(2006),
of the Spanish Civil War as seen through the eyes of an imaginative child.
While history is important to the narrative, the director cleverly subverts the
audience’s expectations, slowly revealing a much more nuanced and layered film,
with a disturbing mystery at its core. It’s a gripping, richly textured work,
and if the symbolism at times seems heavy-handed, that minor weakness is more
than made up for by the twists that the plot takes.
As the film begins to unfold, the audience learns that Andreu’s father,
Farriol (Roger Casamajor), and the murdered man were friends and fellow trade
unionists, both on the losing side of the war. Was his death some sort of
revenge, a score settling? Is Andreu’s father next? In the eyes of the police,
the victors, Farriol must be guilty. His only hope is to flee over the
mountains and into the relative safety of France, a route many men, lucky
enough to escape the purge of the reds, have already taken. Andreu is sent away
to live with his grandmother, who is a caretaker for a wealthy family headed by
an overbearing matriarch, who will later hold the fates of Farriol and Andreu
in her hands. Along with Andreu, his grandmother also shelters his family’s
abandoned women and children, including the wild Nuria (Marina Comas), a cousin
who lost a hand to a grenade. Although the adults pretend that her father also
escaped to France, she knows the much more disturbing truth.
At night, Andreu and his cousins live in a shadowy world of superstitions
and storytelling; there’s an air of menace in the dark and gloomy,
claustrophobic farmhouse, perfectly captured by Antonio Riestra’s hand-held
cinematography. The children, who are outcasts and misfits, paying the price
for their parents’ socialism, see intrigue and adventure around every corner.
And, in some ways, the children are right: conspiracies and cover-ups are
everywhere. But the biggest mystery that Andreu has to solve is how the ghost
of a man who is said to haunt the woods, cursed ever since the war, could be
involved in the death of his young friend.
Complex questions about guilt and innocence aren’t neatly resolved;
Farriol, who still professes devotion to his ideals, is not necessarily the
victim he first appears to be when he’s persecuted for the murder by the
fascist mayor (Sergi López), who once pursued Andreu’s mother (Nora Navas). And
when the story spins in a completely unexpected direction, it’s not even clear
that the vicious crime is directly related to the war at all. The truth is that
a conflict of that horror and magnitude provides cover for a multitude of sins.
While the film isn’t a witch-hunt, it is unsparing in its criticism of the
Church. The clergy, on the side of the fascists, sit in judgement on their
parishioners, even controlling what they eat - allowing those unfortunates on
the losing side only coarse, black bread as some kind of twisted punishment.
It’s perhaps not entirely surprising that, in the end, a bitterly disillusioned
Andreu chooses the path that he does.
Sarah Cronin
------
Nobody Knows Anybody
‘The silent knowledge of unquiet
graves necessarily produced a devastating schism between public and private
memory in Spain’ –Helen Graham (2005: 137)
Pa negre was the big winner at this year’s Goya awards,
picking up nine Goyas (Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best
Cinematography, Best Actress (Navas), Best Supporting Actress (Marull), Best
New Actor (Colomer), and Best New Actress (Comas)) and it became the first film
in Catalan to win Best Film. Originally released in Spain in October 2010, its
Goya triumph saw it re-released in cinemas whereupon it entered the box office top ten. It was not just the Spanish film industry that
rewarded the film, as the end of year survey of forty national critics in Fotogramas saw it rated as the
best Spanish film of the year, again the first time that a Catalan film had
come top (February 2011).
The film takes a child’s-eye
view (Andreu –played by Colomer) of the post-Civil War goings-on in a small,
isolated, rural village, surrounded by forest, in Catalonia. That the film
takes the perspective of a child (Andreu is in every scene and where he is not
directly part of the action the viewer is nonetheless aware of him as an
observer of the world of adults: for example, he often either appears in the
foreground -out of sight of his parents, or other relatives- or as a shadowy
figure towards the back of the shot) recalls earlier Spanish films set in
similar circumstances such as El
espíritu de la colmena / Spirit of the Beehive (Erice, 1973), El espinazo del diablo / The Devil’s
Backbone (del Toro, 2001), and El laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth (del Toro, 2006).
As with those films, the child protagonist comes from a family that was on the
losing side of the Civil War. The film illustrates the gap between what
children see and what
they understand, and also
explores Andreu’s growing realisation that there is a gap between what adultssay and what is true, and that his parents are not
infallible. Another similarity with the earlier films is the use of ‘fantastic’
elements. Villaronga describes his film as ‘a drama with elements of the
thriller and the fantastic. It starts like a crime film and then the fantastic
part appears, but not like in El
laberinto del fauno. Through the children we enter into the world of the
imagination, of dreams’ (Vall 2010: 37 [my translation]).
Pa negre is perhaps closer to El espíritu de la colmena than
to either of del Toro’s films, at least insofar as Andreu’s initial
interpretation of events is filtered through his knowledge of local myth and
legend; Ana (Ana Torrent) interprets the appearance of the army deserter
through her recent experience of watching Frankenstein in Erice’s film, and similarly in Pa negre Andreu attributes the
murders that open the film to ‘Pitorliua’, a ghost that is said to haunt the
surrounding forest. This is one of the things that makesPa negre something other than just another Civil War (or
post-War film), because a key difference between Pa negre and the other films mentioned is that Villaronga’s
film is not ostensibly about the Civil War or its aftermath. Rather it is a
story of betrayals, ambiguous personal relationships, and infantile universes
that contain both innocence and monstrosity, that could transpire in other
times and places; very little is made of the period itself, and a lot of the
power relations and petty jealousies and rivalries pre-date the War (for
example, the rivalry between Andreu’s father (Casamajor) and the local mayor
(López) over Andreu’s mother (Navas) has clearly been going on for a very long
time). This is underlined after Andreu’s discovery of the bodies at the start
of the film when one of the men in the bar makes a comment along the lines of
‘what goes around comes around’; unacknowledged events have been festering
within the community and are now coming to the surface, and ‘Pitorliua’ is not
quite what (or who) Andreu has been led to believe.
Despite the arguable
lack of emphasis on the period, the film is nonetheless rooted in a specific
place from the very first sequence, one of the most brutal film openings I have
seen for quite some time. I don’t want to spoil the plot for those who haven’t
yet seen the film. I watched it knowing very little about it and I think that
the film was all the more effective because of that, so I’m going to give as
few details as possible. But the opening of the film (in which we see a father
and son murdered, and Andreu's discovery of their bodies) and its use of landscape
and location are the first indication of how closed and isolated this community
is, and also of the otherworldliness that permeates the film. Central to this
otherworldliness is the forest, which is revealed as a place of enchantment and
refuge, but also of intense fear. Villaronga notes that there is an evolution
to how the forest is presented in terms of colour (the main palette of the film
consists of shades of green, bluish greys), and which arguably could be said to
mirror Andreu’s fall from innocence into 'enlightenment'; the forest starts out
illuminated in golden light, but by the end is grey and dark (Iglesias and
Kovacsics 2010: 13).
I may revisit the film
on the blog in the future when more people will (hopefully) have seen it, and
also when I have got into a better rhythm with my writing (this feels a bit
clunky to me). In the meantime I will just say that having seen the film, the
Goya triumph is completely understandable. The cast is excellent, and Colomer
and Comas (who plays Andreu's cousin, Nuria) thoroughly deserve their
‘newcomer’ Goyas –given how much of the film rests on their performances, it
would have been a disaster if they weren’t up to the task. Of the adult cast, I
was already familiar with Marull, Fernández, and López, but had never seen Nora
Navas before. I will certainly keep an eye out for her appearances in the
future –every emotion that her character feels is etched upon her face in what
is a heartbreaking performance (and it is largely due to her performance that the
last line of the film is so devastating).
-----
SBS
A gripping example of
a Gothic political allegory.
SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL: Black
Bread, a big prize winner at the Goya awards in 2010, has one of the
best opening sequences of any film I’ve seen this year.
The setting is a forest. It’s daytime but the stark spiky trees cast a dark
pall. A boy and a man make their way uneasily through this rough terrain in
horse and carriage. A hooded figure emerges out of the trees and kills the man
with an enormous rock, while the little boy watches, hidden in the canopy of
the wagon, too scared to make a sound. A beat later the killer will take the
dead man, the boy, the horse and carriage and send the lot over a cliff.
This episode has the feel of a nightmare, and not only because of the
mysterious figure of the hooded killer. There’s a sense that the film is out to
portray a world gone wrong: a world of brutality, victims and violence.
Based on the novel by Emili Teixidor, Black
Bread is ambitious, dense and gripping. Set in 1944 in the
countryside around Barcelona, the narrative takes place in a Spain that has
only recently come out of a civil war, with the Fascists victors. For the
politically suspect it’s a time to be running scared; a time for bitterness and
maybe retribution.
Adapted and directed by Agusti Villaronga, Black
Bread is part Gothic political allegory and part tragic tale of a
boy who by the film’s moving and sad climax has arrived at the end of his
childhood.
The movie’s hero is Andreu (Francesc Colomer), an 11-year-old who idolises his
leftist father Farriol (Roger Casamajor), who quickly falls under the suspicion
of the fascist town Mayor (Sergi lopez) for the murders seen in the film’s
opening. As Farriol flees to hide out in France, Florencia (Nora Navas)
Andreu’s mother sends him away to live with his Grandmother (Elisa Crehuet).
In his new home Andreu is awakened to sex and politics and the lies that adults
must tell so they can learn to live themselves and their past. Andreu’s new
pals include Nuria (Marina Comas), a sexually precocious wild young teen, who
had a hand blown off by a grenade; and an older Boy (Lazaro Mur) who is dying
of consumption and pretends to be a bird.
Black Bread is very much in
the tradition of Gothic fiction; it’s a mystery story alright, but the murders
that set the action in motion are part of a much larger, darker narrative that
stretches way back in time. Andreu’s personal story is intertwined with not
only his own family secrets but also that of his village, and its sinister past
of persecution and political compromise.
Black Bread is full of fine
moments; but Villaronga never quite tops his stunning set-piece opening. Still,
it sets a mood and a tone of unease that never abates.
by Peter Galvin
-----
Grim but
gripping tale of a rural lad's first exposure to evil in Spain's post-Civil War
years.
Reminiscent of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Black Bread” is the grim but gripping tale
of a rural lad’s first exposure to evil in Spain’s post-Civil War years. Agusti
Villaronga’s most mainstream film retains his trademark subversive edge,
quickly evolving from rites-of-passage yarn into a complex, challenging item
that is both dark to its heart and breathlessly watchable. Fest exposure seems
probable, and while pic is unlikely to cross over to mainstream auds, the
offshore arthouse market should find “Bread” to its taste.
Set in 1944, the film opens with its most
visually startling scene, its brutality setting the tone for what follows. A
hooded man kills another man, blinds the victim’s horse and then pushes the
man, together with his son, horse and carriage, over a ravine. The event is
witnessed by 11-year-old Andreu (Francesc Colomer), who rushes home to his
mother, Florencia (Nora Navas, who won the San Sebastian actress prize), and
father, Farriol (Roger Casamajor).
The issue of whodunit quickly becomes
secondary. The village mayor (Sergi Lopez,
playing a more nuanced fascist than he did in “Pan’s Labyrinth”) suspects
Farriol, who has the wrong political connections, is responsible. Farriol
escapes to France, while Andreu is sent by Florencia to live with his
grandmother (Elisa Crehuet), in a house full of women; the men are all either
dead or exiled.
Here he meets his cousin, the feral Nuria
(Marina Comas), bitter and cynical before her time, having lost her fingers to
a grenade. He also befriends
a consumptive boy (Lazaro Mur) who lives in the monastery, and who imagines he
has angels’ wings, yielding some rather over-insistent bird symbolism.
Debt owed to Dickens’ “Great
Expectations,” present in the source novel by Emili Teixidor, even gives Andreu
an overweight, Miss Havisham-like benefactress named Mrs. Manubens (Merce
Aranega). While the women do their best to cope, the war has caused the men to
regress to their most basic instincts: The local schoolteacher (Eduard
Fernandez, brilliantly eliciting both compassion and repulsion) is an alcoholic
who is sleeping with Nuria. Farriol, despite his repeated speeches to Andreu
about maintaining ideals, is an ambiguous figure at best. It all adds up to a
harrowing portrait of a war and a regime that have taken a toll on victors and
vanquished alike, as well as their children.
As a depiction of rural poverty, pic is
impressive: The darkly lit, richly textured interiors seem to be an extension
of the beautifully lensed natural landscape, with a palette that switches from
natural brown tones during the day to harsh blue hues at night. But the
surrounding forests also conjure a more magical darkness that, as with
“Labyrinth,” evokes the world of myth.
Several scenes, including a dream
sequence, are shot through with a raw, unsettling power. But what really
distinguishes the film stylistically is the urgency of the often handheld
lensing, more redolent of a gritty urban drama than of a rural period piece.
The visual hyperactivity reflects the emotionally numbed characters’ lack of
control over their own lives as they fight to stay a step ahead of the next
unforeseen event, buffeted from tragedy to tragedy by forces beyond their
control. Even the closest relationship in the film, between Andreu and Farriol,
is always troubled.
Perfs are uniformly fine from a Catalan
cast whose biggest names, including Laia Marull as Pauleta, the deranged wife
of the man murdered in the first scene, are relegated to the smaller roles.
Villaronga’s script keeps the plot moving relentlessly forward while still
finding time to raise the novel’s troubling questions about the decency of the
human spirit. These questions mostly center on Andreu, and Colomer carries the
emotional weight superbly, especially in a wonderfully understated final moment.
by Jonathan Holland
------
Stodgy, starchy and not particularly nutritious,
"Black Bread" is the latest in a very long line of films to examine
the harmful effects of war and its aftermath upon innocent children.
SAN SEBASTIAN --
Stodgy, starchy and not particularly nutritious, Black
Bread is the latest in a very long line of films to examine the
harmful effects of war and its aftermath upon innocent children. Adapted from a
well-regarded literary novel, the mainstream-oriented picture tries to cram too
much incident and symbolism into its two-hour running-time. Nevertheless, the
Spanish has a solid domestic box office prospects given the subject matter, the
familiarity of the source material and the starry cast.
Notably positive reactions from local and national press after the movie's
world premiere in competition at the San Sebastian Film Festival will boost its
appeal within Spain, along with Nora Navas' Best
Actress award for her performance as the youthful protagonist's put-upon
mother. Festivals specializing in Iberian fare will want to check out this
Catalan-language production (original title Pa
Negre) set in the countryside near Barcelona in 1944.
Main focus is on bright Andreu (Francesc Colomer),
aged around 10, whose family are implicated in the ongoing conflict between the
government forces of General Franco, successful in the recently-concluded
Spanish Civil War, and those who oppose or resist the victorious nationalists.
In an atmosphere of tension and suspicion, the children of the area channel
their fears into folk-tales of supernatural forces in the surrounding hills and
forests.
This aspect of the story allows Villaronga (best known for co-directing 2003's Aro Tolbukhin: In the Mind of a Killer)
to incorporate some gothic, supernatural touches that place Black Bread in the
tradition of Victor Erice's enduringly seminal masterpiece Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
and Guillermo Del Toro's global hit Pan's Labyrinth (2005). He
even casts the latter movie's Sergi Lopez in a very similar role as a sneering
Fascist bully-boy.
But such comparisons only serve to emphasize the shortcomings of Black Bread. (The intriguing
title refers to the brown-flour food which peasants like Andreu's family
subsist on.) After a startlingly violent and disturbing opening - involving
simulated (but very realistic-looking) cruelty to a horse, the film gradually
bogs down into an overcomplicated stew of secrets, lies, myths and melodramatic
revelations.
Villaronga generally handles proceedings in a bland, functional manner.
Hand-held camerawork is deployed to give proceedings a slightly arty touch. He
does obtain fresh performances from his child actors, their realistic
brattishness offsetting a general tendency towards tear-jerking sentimentality
that's especially noticeable in the grim final reels.
-----
“Black Bread” starts of with a scene of such stunning violence—without
giving too much away, it involves a sledgehammer and a horse, among a slew of
other very nasty things—that it casts a shadow over the rest of the movie. Set
in post-Spanish Civil War Catalonia, the film creates an atmosphere where the
potential for death and hostility to erupt exists around every corner, in every
situation. From the outset you learn that no place is safe; not the family
hearth, government offices, and certainly not the multitude of caves, woods,
and fields where the 11-year-old Andreu (Francesc Colomer) grows up.
Andreu witnesses the final moments of his best friend, and the dying child
gurgles the name Pitorliua, the name of a ghost said to haunt their village.
His father, Farriol (Roger Casamajor), is accused of the murder, and must go
into hiding. Since the boy’s mother, Florencia (Nora Navas), works ridiculous
shifts in a sweatshop yarn factory, she sends Andreu to live with his
grandmother, aunts, and a collection of cousins, including Nuria (Marina
Comas), who had one hand blown off by a bomb. The two wounded children form
close bond, and are forced into the grown-up world of secrets, lies,
jealousies, rumors, politics, and redemption. Ultimately Andreu is forced to
make arduous, soul-rending choices about his dreams, family, and loyalties,
decisions that are difficult—at best—for adults, let alone a child trying to
come to terms with the world.
Andreu begins as a kind, wide-eyed innocent—sneaking bread to a
consumptive, contagious inmate at a monastery, a young man who may or may not
be an angel—and he believes the best in people, until little by little it is revealed
to him that what his father tells him is true, that people are capable of
extreme acts of evil. Andreu and his cousins still believe in magic and curses
and hope and dreams, but when faced with the devastating press of reality, they
can’t escape into fantasy for long, and are compelled to adapt and come to
terms with the harsh world they inhabit. Nuria serves as a guide for Andreu
through these treacherous waters. Most of the idealism she had disappeared with
her hand, and what remnants lingered after that vanished when she discovered
her father’s body hanging from the rafters, a suicide. She is pragmatic, and
uses what she has to get through and better her situation—doling out sexual
favors for benefits. She’ll show you hers, for a price. It speaks well of their
talent that two such young actors can carry parts with this much depth and
weight, roles that would crush most adult actors into flattened, mushy little
pancakes. Colomer and Comas both deliver subtle, nuanced, and at times
heartbreaking performances.
There are definitely supernatural elements at play in “Black Bread”, enough
to earn it comparisons to other Spanish-language films like “The Devil’s
Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”, but it is cut from a different cloth.
Atmospherically and tonally it resembles those films, and definitely belongs in
that discussion, but for all the talk of ghosts and monsters, and grandma’s
fireside horror tales, the world of “Black Bread” is firmly rooted in the
physical, corporeal realm. The characters are certainly haunted, all of them to
some degree, but not by ghosts, by decisions and actions that they cannot take
back, and pasts they cannot escape. And monsters and horrors abound, but not
the kind of myth and legend, these are the much more human, much more frightening
variety, the ones that can actually reach out, touch you, and do you harm.
As the film progresses Andreu slowly unravels the truth about his father,
his mother, Nuria, Pitorliua, the twisted nature of their town and their story,
and the part he is to play in everything. Anchored by skillfully executed
cinematography that lends an air of urgency to each scene, “Black Bread” is a
cynical, almost callously realistic, meditation on defeat—as the alcoholic
school teacher says, “woe the vanquished”—and what it means to win or lose, and
the lingering effects of ideals and politics in war, even after the war has
supposedly come to a conclusion. Based on the acclaimed novel by Emili
Teixidor, the film nearly swept the Goya Awards—think the Spanish Oscars—and is
making the festival rounds, screening at the Seattle International Film Festival,
and will hopefully find a distributor.
------
"Pain noir" : Dans
les secrets d'un village catalan
"Pain
noir", d'Agusti Villaronga, a remporté neuf Goyas, l'équivalent espagnol
des Césars
LE MONDE | 23.08.2011
Pain noir a remporté neuf Goyas,
l'équivalent des Césars français. Quatre pour les acteurs, un pour le
réalisateur, puis meilleur film, adaptation, photographie et décor. Une seule
récompense n'aurait pas suffi, car c'est le soin apporté à l'ensemble des
détails qui permet à ce long-métrage de tenirson
atmosphère du début à la fin.
Scène d'ouverture : une forêt, un double meurtre, un
cheval poussé d'une falaise, dont le crâne se fracasse sur la paroi. D'entrée, Pain noir, d'Agusti Villaronga,
ne dissimule pas sa violence, qui contrebalance l'omniprésence des secrets à venir.
Il se montre ainsi fidèle au roman d'Emili Teixidor, qui usait parfois de
crudité.
Nous sommes au lendemain de la guerre civile
espagnole. Après avoir trouvé
les corps, le jeune Andreu est envoyé chez sa grand-mère : son père est accusé
du crime, sa mère s'échine à l'usine. Mais
le dernier mot prononcé par l'un des mourants,"Pitorliua", stimule la curiosité de l'enfant. Andreu
passe alors son temps à écouter aux
portes, à se trouver aux
bons moments aux mauvais endroits. La caméra l'accompagne à hauteur, derrière
le feuillage des arbres et les fenêtres opaques. Elle entretient ainsi
l'adrénaline et le malaise - quitte à user d'un
systématisme redondant.
Du seul point de vue du jeune garçon et à travers sa
quête de vérité, on saisit les retombées de la guerre civile sur ce petit
village catalan où tout le monde ment
pour se protéger.
Avec l'aide remarquable de
ses acteurs, Agusti Villaronga tient l'ambiguïté des personnages. Ni noirs ni
blancs, la plupart se présentent aussi complexes qu'humains. Gris donc, ou
marron, à en croire la
poussière de leurs habitations mal éclairées et la proximité des bois.
Au début, Andreu veut bien tout croire puisqu'il ne
sait rien, depuis les légendes urbaines jusqu'à la mythologie. Le discours
fantastique du film apporte une once de poésie sans alléger la
densité de ses nombreux sujets : tensions politiques, inégalités sociales,
intégrité des idéaux, homosexualité... Ils forment un écrin contextuel complet
au récit et relèvent d'un subtil dosage qui empêche Pain noir de s'éparpiller.
C'est ainsi que les messages passent ; reste à les digérer.
-------
