Chimpomatic

Pan's Labyrinth

(dir. Guillermo Del Toro)

Excellent, involving, intense fantasy from the Hellboy director, who's moved back into making Spanish language films here. Set during Franco's fascist post-second world war regime, we follow Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young girl whose mother has remarried the local commander of a military outpost in a tiny village. While her mother's pregnancy keeps her bedridden, Ofelia finds herself drawn into a Gilliamesque world of tricksy fauns, cricket-like fairies and a complex mythology.

Paralled to this is the stark brutality of the fascists, making snap life-or-death decisions, point blank executions, torturing the communist rebels etc. The violence escalates as Ofelia's journey into a magic world deepens.

The fantasy elements feel organic here, superbly balanced against the real world, drawing you into both without trivialising either the history or the weighty sense of doom inside the labyrinth.