After a tiring day of buying presents amongst a frenzy of fellow Christmas shoppers, me and my housemate Jane settled down in front of our TV to watch Pans Labyrinth.  Not having heard much about the film previously, and not really knowing what to expect I was both surprised and intrigued to learn that the film was Spanish but, luckily, also catered for my lack of language skills with English subtitles.

The film follows two stories set in ‘real’ and ‘fantasy’ worlds. The young girl Ofelia is the only character to be involved in both these settings and experiences a set of turbulent events in each. In the ‘real’ world, Ofelia finds herself a stepdaughter to a brutal Falangist Captain who is embarking on a viscous hunt for the Spanish Maquis, meanwhile, her pregnant mother becomes increasingly ill.

Throughout her trauma, Ofelia discovers a labyrinth where she meets a mysterious faun. The faun announces that she was once a Princess and in order to reclaim her kingdom, she must preform three dangerous tasks which lead her to meet a wide manner of creatures.

The two stories unravel, seemingly unrelated, though the conclusion wraps things up nicely and we quickly realise how important each character was to the story.

The film took me by surprise with its clever mix of children’s fantasy and the Spanish Civil War history. The two worlds provided such a contrast with the ‘real’ being rather violent and raw and the ‘fantasy’ conjuring excellent graphics and fairytale creatures. I was curious to how the ending could ever tie these two together but it managed to do so with ease.

Disturbing and fantastical, Pans Labyrinth provided Jane and I with an excellent girly night in without the feeling of having watched something completely noneducational. 

“Pan’s Labyrinth, which closed this year’s New York Film Festival, represents a quantum leap in del Toro’s storytelling, drawing on “Alice in Wonderland,” “Pinocchio” and many other inspirations to create something quite new and wonderful. The acting is terrific, and the visuals are mesmerizing.”

The New Yorker