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Article: Reality and fairy tale: Magic meets Franco's Spain in del Toro's 'Pan's Labyrinth'.
- Article from:
- The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD)
- Article date:
- January 19, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 The Baltimore Sun. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Michael Sragow
Jan. 19--Pan's Labyrinth trips the dark fantastic. It marks Guillermo del Toro as a moviemaking fabulist with imagination, emotion and the ability to reflect life in a haunted-funhouse mirror. Set in 1944, five years after Generalissimo Francisco Franco won the Spanish Civil War, it tells two simple, parallel stories. In the world of "reality," a young girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), goes with her very pregnant mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), to the north of Spain; there, her stepfather, Capitan Vidal (Sergi Lopez), intends to squash a stubborn pocket of resistance. But in a garden labyrinth next to military headquarters, without much ...