The Spirit of the Beehive - Film Review

Victor Erice's Haunting Drama Set After the Spanish Civil War

Sep 10, 2009

Erice's remarkable movie starring Ana Torrent as a young girl whose imagination is inspired by James Whale's Frankenstein and her own growing sense of identity.

Set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, The Spirit of the Beehive is a haunting film about a young girl who begins to reflect on the meaning of death after attending a screening of Frankenstein (James Whale 1931).

The opening credits are a series of childish drawings ending with the words ‘Once Upon a Time,’ like we are entering the world of the fairytale. The drawings present scenes or objects that will appear in the film; from the villagers watching Frankenstein to Ana’s older sister Isabel jumping over a small bonfire.

Ana (Ana Torrent) lives in a rural Spanish town still feeling the effects of the war. All of the adults around her seem afflicted by loss. Ana’s parents, Fernando (Fernando Fernan Gomez) and Teresa (Teresa Gimpera), have drifted apart, although a photograph in his study indicates they were close once. Theresa writes to an unnamed man, probably a lover, who seems to have been exiled from Spain for political reasons. Even Ana’s schoolteacher breaks down and cries when reading a poem about loss by the Spanish poet Rosalia Del Castro,

A travelling cinema comes to town and screens Frankenstein for the villagers. Ana is fascinated by the scene in which the monster drowns a little girl. Not understanding how fragile the child is, he picks her up and playfully throws her in the water drowning her. Isabel tells her younger sister the monster did not die as the film suggests, but still wanders the earth. To meet him, all Ana has to do is introduce herself, so she begins to look for Frankenstein’s monster.

Erice uses very little dialogue preferring to tell the story through images. The editing is elliptical; long shots of barren landscapes and close-ups of objects or the actors faces, give symbolic meaning to what is shown. Fernando keeps a beehive and cinematographer Luis Cuadrado uses yellow filters over his camera to enhance the analogy of life being similar to the monotony of the bees’ existence.

Although ostensibly a serious drama, Erice draws on the horror movie for much of the imagery in The Spirit of the Beehive. The use of Frankenstein as the catalyst for Ana’s awakening is inspired. It is after all a story about a child, neglected by his father and having to make his own way in a complex and violent world.

Erice uses horror motifs such as a shot of a full moon, or of Ana in a darkened hallway as if she was hiding from the villain in a slasher movie. Frankenstein’s monster even turns up in a cameo appearance, though clearly this takes place in Ana’s imagination.

Given the man was still in power in 1973 Erice was taking a risk in criticising in Franco’s regime, even if the events portrayed in the film take place some thirty odd years beforehand. Though the older characters in The Spirit of the Beehive are broken, the film ends on a pleasing note of defiance. Ana may return home, but she asserts her own individuality in the film's final scene.

The copyright of the article The Spirit of the Beehive - Film Review in European Films is owned by Kevin Sturton. Permission to republish The Spirit of the Beehive - Film Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.