REVIEW: DVD Release: KM31

Film: KM31
Release date: 31st March 2008
Certificate: 15
Running time: 102 mins
Director: Rigoberto Castañeda
Starring: Adria Collado, Raul Mendez, Iliana Fox, Carlos Aragon, Luisa Huertas
Genre: Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Yume
Format: DVD
Country: Mexico/Spain

KM31 excited Mexican horror enthusiasts with its release in 2006, following a lengthy baron period. Castaneda’s ambitious project looked to combine style with a Mexican folk legend. With the Latino horror crown firmly on del Toro’s head, this is the first horror eye-opener to come from Mexico since his chiller Cronos.

Agata, a young woman, is driving through KM31 on a Mexican highway when she hits a small boy. Shaken by the crash, she calls her boyfriend, Omar, before approaching the child, who she presumes is dead. As she reaches out to the unconscious boy, he turns towards her revealing wide undead eyes. Agata steps back and is hit by a passing truck.

At the hospital, Agata’s twin sister, Catalina, waits anxiously to hear her sister’s condition. Agata is in a deep coma, and has had both of her legs amputated. In the wake of the accident, Catalina begins to experience hallucinations connected to the highway where her sister’s accident took place. She is haunted by images of the young boy, her dead mother and her drowning sister - it is as if she is experiencing a terror felt by Agata from within her comatose state.

The visions persist, and as it becomes clear that Agata is calling for her sister’s help, Catalina sets out to uncover the secrets behind KM31, discovering a dark history of death and disappearances. To save her sister, she must delve deep into a long forgotten Mexican folk tale that haunts the highway and has captured Agata in a world half way between life and death...


Hype surrounding this film led to anticipation of a very new Mexican style of horror, however, the presentation of this film borrows heavily from Asia. Casteneda’s emphasis on the film’s stylistics serve to give an array of visual pleasures and terrors, and thus it is glossy and extremely well crafted, but it’s difficult to see past the highly derivative production.

From the outset, we see a young, ghostly child, pale skinned with black hair and eyes. This creation is one that is frustratingly familiar when you consider the likes of The Ring and The Grudge. Modern horror has a penchant for producing its scares with the warped faces of young children, and whereas those J-horror classics did it with terrific effect, it is becoming a less and less appealing facet of contemporary horror.

Casteneda does attempt to install a little Mexican flavour into his first feature with the incorporation of an old Mexican wives tale. The story of ‘La Llorona’, or “the crying woman,” as accounted by a mysterious inhabitant of KM31, is a tale of a woman who killed her children to win a man’s heart. One would have hoped this would have been the sole focus of the story, but Castenda mixes in sub-plots of romance between Catalina and her closest friend, a fumbling Nuno, and the death of the sisters’ mother through tragic circumstances. There are too many threads in this tale, and as a viewing experience, it is needlessly complicated.

There are some scares, and the film succeeds with its technical mastery. One particularly disturbing image is that of Agata as she lies in her hospital bed, bandaged and bruised, with two stumps where her legs used to be. Although the film fails to be truly engrossing, those who stay with it will in no way have a comfortable experience. There is an array of unsettling backdrops visited that create a very daunting spectacle - in the final scenes, the two worlds of a Mexican sewer and a very haunting riverside slide between each other in Catalina’s conscious.

There are also some very good performances on display. Iliana Fox plays the two sisters with enough wide eyed terror for both herself and a less enthusiastic audience, and Adria Collado is likeable as her doting and slightly goofy love interest. Unfortunately, there are some very predictable character types included - the familiar figures of an insightful middle-aged mystic and a suspicious police officer only serve to make this film feel even more processed.


KM31 went on to become one of Mexico’s biggest box office successes, but it’s difficult to understand why. Casteneda has sacrificed good storytelling for poor imitation of an already tired style of filmmaking. This is not a terrible horror film, just a terrible disappointment. LW

REVIEW: DVD Release: The Night Of The Sunflowers

Film: The Night Of The Sunflowers
Release date: 27th August 2007
Certificate: 15
Running time: 123 mins
Director: Jorge Sanchez-Cabezudo
Starring: Carmelo Gomez, Celso Bugallo, Judith Diakhate, Manuel Moron, Mariano Alameda
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Studio: Yume
Format: DVD
Country: Spain/France/Portugal

Drawing on the finest traditions of Spanish cinema, writer-director Jorgé Sanchez-Cabezudo’s award-winning debut uses six overlapping scenarios to play out the events of a single day in rural Spain – and entangle the lives of his characters in a web of violence, betrayal, greed, revenge and injustice.

“Is justice really necessary if no one demands it?” asks the jaded deputy police chief as events unfold unpleasantly in a secluded Spanish village. Events that begin with the discovery of the body of a teenage girl in a field of sunflowers. As a travelling salesman watches news of the death on TV, a potholer, his wife and his assistant are attracted to a remote mountain village to check out a prehistoric cave. The local police chief looks forward to his impending retirement, his son-in-law deputy dreams of a life away from the force and his wife – and unnoticed by anyone, two embittered locals play out a private war of attrition…


With a technique admirably reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Cabezudo weaves the lives of this disparate set of characters together masterfully, through six distinct chapters, playing with the chronology and varied viewpoints of the protagonists to give a shifting version of events. There are echoes of French film noir in the sinister, brooding atmosphere, too (Tell No One springs to mind) while the non-linear, sectioned structure also gives a nod to Hollywood offerings such as Memento, Crash and Babel.

What sets it apart from such influences is Cabezudo’s perceptive view of Spanish society. Had this film been French, we’d have had a decidedly urban setting, somewhere like the murky backstreets of Marseille. A Hollywood alternative, blandly focus-grouped before release, would surely have lacked the courage to pursue its central theme to such a brave and unsettling conclusion. “The film is about the isolation of those living in the Spanish countryside, and the loneliness and violence that city dwellers take with them when they go there,” explains the charismatic director in a Q&A bonus feature on the DVD. “It also reminds us that our actions have consequences – the lives of the characters will never be the same again. And of course that, unlike the movies, real life does not always deliver justice.”

Such a real-life rural setting follows the great tradition of Spanish directors such as Buñuel (Sunflowers is set in the same Las Hurdes region of western Spain that gave its name to his 1932 documentary) or Almodovar, for example, with Penelope Cruz’s character returning to her parent’s village in Volver. It reminds us that, for all the bright city lights and the costa del tourist traps, Spain is still essentially a rural country often at odds with urbanisation.

Sunflowers also continues Spanish cinema’s great theme of complex personal relationships, the simultaneous charm and menace of an environment, and the way these all combine to throw up unexpected, sometimes shocking, outcomes.

It’s these personal relationships that are delivered so magnificently by the cast. Viewers may recognise Celso Bugallo from The Sea Inside, and here he gives a wonderfully understated (and Goya-nominated) performance as the wily police chief uncovering his deputy’s rather unorthodox approach to police work. Vincente Romero’s hapless deputy slides superbly from the quiet confidence of a man with a plan to a haunted, desperate figure watching his ill-gotten gains go up in smoke (literally). The scene of Manuel Moron’s unassuming vacuum cleaner salesman meeting the potholer’s wife transforms the viewer into terrified bystander, due largely to Moron’s masterful calm-before-the-storm approach. And our embittered locals, duelling for supremacy in a private world that others have long since forgotten, give one of the finest portrayals of poignant isolation you’re likely to see on screen.

So what to make of Sunflowers as a whole? It is certainly greater than the sum of its six parts, but Cabezudo is not just to be congratulated for the structure of the film, beautifully balanced as it is with the same character beginning and ending proceedings. It is more the director’s ability to portray such uncomfortable truths about ourselves that most impresses. He deftly steers us from the moral high ground to the swamping thought, in such trying circumstances, that could be us leaving our moral compass in the long grass instead.

Ultimately, this is a beautifully realised morality tale. Every character ends up worse off, yet all have achieved self-preservation by acting immorally. They have kept their own acts hidden by letting the worst act go unpunished – a decision which will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Cabezudo’s courageous decision to resist a Hollywood ending, in favour of such realism, is both unnerving and commendable.


This would be an impressive piece of work for an experienced director. For a debutante, it’s downright magnificent. CS

REVIEW: DVD Release: Opera Jawa

Film: Opera Jawa
Release date: 28th January 2008

Certificate: 12

Running time: 119 mins

Director: Garin Nugroho
Starring: Eko Supriyanto, Martinus Miroto, Artika Sari Devi

Genre: Musical

Studio: Yume

Format: DVD

Country: Indonesia/Austria

Opera Jawa draws on the many centuries old heritage of Indonesian theatre, dance, song and storytelling to create a tragic tale of love, lust and betrayal that is dripping in symbolism.

Taking as its inspiration the Hindu tale of Rama and Sita (here known as Sinta), director and scriptwriter Garin Nugroho transcribes the action to modern day Java, where three people, who formerly danced the story of Rama and Sinta, seem doomed to repeat the story in their own lives.

In the story of Rama and Sinta, the two are a happily married couple until the jealous ten-headed Demon King Ravana kidnaps Sinta for himself. Rama enlists Hanuman, the Monkey King, and a fierce battle ensues between the monkey and demon armies. Ravana is killed by a shot from Rama's bow, and Rama and Sinta return home in a festival of lights (Diwali). The Javanese version of the Ramayana differs greatly, but not in terms of the basic story.

The film is told through traditional Javanese opera and dance. Setio (Rama) and Siti (Sinta), former dancers of the Ramayana, are married and now run a business selling earthenware. But the market in earthen pots crashes and they are left poor. Setyo, despite loving Siti deeply, feels a terrible strain and turns his back on her. Meanwhile Ludiro (Ravana), a powerful businessman who used to dance with Setyo and Siti, begins to tempt Siti to him through gifts and charisma.

Heartbroken and destitute, Setyo organises an army of the poor to attack the rich of the village, whose own army is led by Ludiro. In the fighting, Ludiro is killed. Siti returns to Setyo, but can he take her back?


Opera Jawa is a unique film. Nugroho chooses to use Symbolism to such an extent that it becomes the story. Creating a world which isn't the world, where fantasy and reality are both obvious creations and so the same illusion, where the stepping stone between our world and the interior thoughts of a character is the simple act of putting on a mask. Occasionally, it's difficult to follow the story due to the abstractions, but the symbolism is never less than crystal clear. Mannequins ubiquitously dot the scenery, replacing, mainly, dead bodies. One scene has red wax heads, decapitated from white plaster bodies. The heads burning as candles and the wax dripping down onto the bodies. It's an unforgettable image following up the, equally symbolic, battle towards the end of the film that is played out through puppetry. News reports are played over a stone TV.

Masks play an important part in this film, and in Indonesian Art as a whole. In the west we have become rather immune to the affect great mask work can play on our understanding of art. In the mainstream, we now only see masked superheroes where the mask usually goes to accentuate features. In Opera Jawa, the masks are often blank: a wicker hat, some leaves, a half carved piece of wood - in one instance, a t-shirt. The effect is mesmerising as, through the mask and the skill of the dancers, characters are transformed into monsters, or their inner thoughts laid bare.

The skill of the performers cannot be overstated. This is movement that talks not just of years of training or innate ability, but thousands of years of tradition, of dances honed over centuries. It is really quite humbling to watch. The music side of things, however, is a slight problem, at least when it comes to the western ear. We have been spoiled by our exposure to chromatic octaves, Puccini Operas and the classical tradition. Trying to listen to an orchestra where staying on the right note isn't as important as creating an overall effect is fine in itself but, especially when you're also following subtitled lyrics, the music fades into the background. Fortunately, the incredible visuals more than make up for not being able to hum the arias afterwards.

Opera Jawa, despite filling a kind of fantasy halfway world, does so entirely naturally. There are no special effects in the film, no artificial lighting, at least nothing obviously so. The fantasy is as real as our world, with monsters created out of people and masks, and when an obvious surrealism ends, it does so simply with the removal of masks or the monsters simply walking off screen. This is pure theatre, and truly more successful than any of the special effects tricks employed by cinema if you can buy into the surrealism - although not everyone will.

Only once is there a misstep by the director. In the midst of Ludiro's final seduction of Siti, a remarkable scene involving an exceptionally long red cloth, Nugroho cuts to an out and out comedy, where the very fat occasional narrator strums a ukulele and Ludiro does a very, very silly dance proclaiming all the nice things he has bought for Siti. It is very funny, but this is the same Ludiro who at the start of the film proclaims that he will bloodily destroy any who oppose him while dancing over a severed ox head in an abattoir. This little self-deprecatory scene, instead of bringing humour to the story, just serves to point up how seriously the rest of the film takes itself. For a misstep however, it is still enjoyable.

Supriyanto, Miroto and Sari Devi all deserve praise for their performances. Miroto as Setyo has a wonderful vulnerability as Siti slips away from him, but it is Supriyanto as Ludiro and Sari Devi as Siti who steal the film, both individually and together, where their dancing takes on a primitive eroticism. Also worthy of praise is the Hanuman character (unnamed on screen) for which the actor crafts a truly simian movement that puts any western actor that has had the misfortune to have to pull on a gorilla suit to shame.


A truly stunning piece of cinema that exudes craftsmanship, beauty and traditional techniques to transcribe new life into an old story. It won't satisfy those looking for action, but if you want to watch a film that will fill you with awe and wonder, then this should be high on your list. PE