Word: toros
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...Morocco are cheaper. Spain's good schools, health care and modern infrastructure will keep European snowbirds coming, but foreign buyers are already scarcer. "Until last year we were selling 20 to 25 properties, mostly to British, but now it is down to 18 to 20 a month," says Francisco Toro, director of Mark-Sol real estate agency in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol. "When we get a client now, we must cosset him and treat him like gold dust. We have to work harder and spend more money on publicity." The influx of foreign cash has its darker side...
...Another adult twist on a child's fable is Pan's Labyrinth. Writer-director Guillermo Del Toro flawlessly laces a Lewis Carroll-like fantasy of an underground kingdom into the realistic story of a sadistic officer (Sergi López) in Franco's Spain and a wily insurgent servant (Maribel Verdú), fighting for possession of a sad, dreamy child. It's got sumptuous special effects and, finally, a mournful wisdom about love, honor and death. Also a standout was Climates, from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. This minor-key étude of love, sex and selfishness used minimalist strategies...
...This is a fantasy realm so fully and elegantly realized, it might be the adaptation of a classic novel. Yet the source is Del Toro's own capacious imagination. The inverted logic of a child's dreams rarely has had such a secure equilibrium. And it is brilliantly visualized by Guillermo Navarro's cinematography, a severe symphony of dark shades in the house, more dramatic color contrasts in the labyrinth...
...Toro calls Pan's Labyrinth a child's dark fantasy for adults. Certainly it's not for children. Even the grown-up audience in Cannes was jolted by the Captain's acts of violence towards others (he shoots a suspect in cold blood after smashing his face to pulp with a broken bottle) and himself. The scene in which, after having his own cheek cut open, he sutures a pretty severe gash in his mouth, earned the audience's applause...
...Most "adult" is Del Toro's belief that the world into which young minds soar or retreat is fragile indeed. The ending should not be revealed, except to say I've never encountered it in a children's book nor movie. While Ofelia burrows into Pan's labyrinth, the world outside - the real one - plays by a harsher, more violent, set of rules. Learning the difference is the beginning of maturity, the end of childhood innocence...