"Is justice really necessary if no one demands it?" - this is the moral question that one of the characters of the film is asking at some point, and this is the key question of the film that keeps being asked by everybody who watched this very well made and surprising film noir made by first time Spanish director Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo.
The unconventional setting for a thriller story is a Spanish village, living a quite life where nothing happens until things start happening - a cave is being discovered and in hope it may hide some cave paintings specialists from the big city are brought in to explore it, and a serial rapist hunts its victims in the region. In the turmoil of the events a man is killed in a conflict triggered by confusion, and the local cops called to solve the case prove to be more than willing to cover the facts in order to avoid their own lives being disturbed and their smaller or bigger lies be discovered. All settles back eventually in its apparently normal state, as no one cares about a dead man with no family or sympathies left behind. Yet, the real villain of the story remains uncaught and the ending suggests that he - also a man of family and conventions - will probably hit again.
The story is told with a very sure hand, and its structure - six episodes shifting the angle of telling the same facts from one character to another - builds gradually the tension and the interest of the viewers. the director certainly knows well the background of the Spanish villages where the story is set, and its characters are human and authentic. An excellent team of actors sustains the whole movie, Celso Bugalo is especially good as the old policeman who slowly understands the dimensions of evil he is faced with and reluctantly accepts the compromise or at least part of it in order to save the marriage of his daughter, and Manuel Moron as the real criminal, hiding its evil deeds under the masque of an apparently benign sales man and good family man.
Spanish cinema has brought many inventive and successful films in various genres in the last decades. 'La noche de los girasoles' combines the classical psychological thriller story set in an unusual place with an older Spanish tradition of bringing up to screen the sins of the middle classes and the dangers of moral compromise. This is a remarkable debut.
The unconventional setting for a thriller story is a Spanish village, living a quite life where nothing happens until things start happening - a cave is being discovered and in hope it may hide some cave paintings specialists from the big city are brought in to explore it, and a serial rapist hunts its victims in the region. In the turmoil of the events a man is killed in a conflict triggered by confusion, and the local cops called to solve the case prove to be more than willing to cover the facts in order to avoid their own lives being disturbed and their smaller or bigger lies be discovered. All settles back eventually in its apparently normal state, as no one cares about a dead man with no family or sympathies left behind. Yet, the real villain of the story remains uncaught and the ending suggests that he - also a man of family and conventions - will probably hit again.
The story is told with a very sure hand, and its structure - six episodes shifting the angle of telling the same facts from one character to another - builds gradually the tension and the interest of the viewers. the director certainly knows well the background of the Spanish villages where the story is set, and its characters are human and authentic. An excellent team of actors sustains the whole movie, Celso Bugalo is especially good as the old policeman who slowly understands the dimensions of evil he is faced with and reluctantly accepts the compromise or at least part of it in order to save the marriage of his daughter, and Manuel Moron as the real criminal, hiding its evil deeds under the masque of an apparently benign sales man and good family man.
Spanish cinema has brought many inventive and successful films in various genres in the last decades. 'La noche de los girasoles' combines the classical psychological thriller story set in an unusual place with an older Spanish tradition of bringing up to screen the sins of the middle classes and the dangers of moral compromise. This is a remarkable debut.