♥♥♥
 |
| Darkness envelopes two characters on this uninformative poster for Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo's The Night of the Sunflowers |
A rapist and murderer of women is loose in a rural area of Castilly y Leon, Spain, when an outsider cave scientist arrives there with his beautiful girlfriend to to explore a newly discovered grotto.
The Night of the Sunflowers is written and directed by debuting Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo (Mustek (1997, short)). The title is a literal translation of the original Spanish title.
The film starts promising and shows a grueling rape crime in real-time. - We are boarded on The Night of the Sunflowers, as it turns out to be chronologically sophisticated. But its thriller promise is soon abandoned by Sánchez-Cabezudo in favor of a feel-bad crime drama, which reaches new heights in the depressing content variety. - Not least because all of the developments seem realistically enough.
SPOILER The scientist's crew soon strike down the wrong villager as revenge, and a local cop talks them into cutting up and disappearing the body. - But the deceased man's father-in-law, who is also the local police chief, finds them out, takes a bribe and informs everyone that he never wants to hear talk of the incident. Meanwhile the real criminal returns home to his wife and TV on the couch.
The Night of the Sunflowers is a study in humanity's willingness to sweep even truly horrific crimes under the rug, and about crimes' tendency to spur new crimes, and about the amoral in man. It is well-made but extremely depressing.
Sánchez-Cabezudo talks about the film in a 6-minute clip here
Cost: Unknown
Box office: 1.6 mil. $
= Uncertain but likely a mega-flop (projected return of 0.45 times the cost)
[The Night of the Sunflowers was released 25 August (Spain) and runs 123 minutes. The film did not have a North-American release, (though it was screened at Cleveland International Film Festival). Its 3 biggest markets were Spain with 1.1 mil. $ (68.8 % of the total gross), the UK with 120k $ (7.5 %) and France with 114k $ (7.1 %). If made on a low budget of 3.5 mil. $, the film would rank as a mega-flop. The film was nominated for 3 Goya awards, among other honors. Sánchez-Cabezudo has not returned with a feature since but instead turned to writing and directing for TV. 2.8k+ IMDb users have given The Night of the Sunflowers a 7.1/10 average rating.]
What do you think of The Night of the Sunflowers?
No comments:
Post a Comment