Review of Hierro (2009) by Pondering T — 27 Sep 2009

Psychological thriller about the mother (Elena Anaya) who desperately tries to find her son. Her son disappears mysteriously when these two are visiting the island of El Hierro. Story is rather simple and there's not much dialogue. Great performance by Anaya. She manages to look both beautiful and awful at the same time. There are many good elements in the film: cast, breathtaking landscape and suspense. Unfortunately, something is missing, the film seems to lose its' grip near the end, or maybe film is not unique enough to become such a classic as for example Pan's Labyrinth.

I've seen PL and The Orphanage, and liked them both tremendously. Hierro and The Orphanage have many similar features: 1) close mother-son-relationship, and this mother doesn't give up finding her son, when eveyone else has lost their hope. 2) hide-and-seek-game. 3) water/ocean with cliffs/caves and tides and how one creates an atmosphere of ultimate isolation, threat and malice with them. 4) Human psyche is really powerful, we can imagine things and invent storylines, events, but also we can survive when we listen to our inner voices (intuition).

This film has quite a strong score. The music irritated me occasionally. There could be less piano, and the music could be more subtle. Now the music underlined events and moods too obviously. All in all, I'd say the film is a good starting point to director Ibáñez, and it really made me curious about the career of Anaya.