a portrait of Spain after Franco's regime. portrait of the past as root of the fears and vulnerable peace. portrait of childhood looking the source of justice. a novel. and its splendid adaptation. Black Bread could be defined as thriller, mystery or political film. in fact, it is only analysis of grow up in the circle of a wounded world who has not courage to assume the events who defines it. the truth not gives freedom. only creates a way who has ambition to revenge the errors of adults for a cruel pragmatism. a dark film who is useful trip in heart of a community. nothing new. only bitter, cruel and cold. the lost of innocence and the fruits of many compromises as price of survive.and the final answer of a young man who discovers, step by step, the frame of the truth.

The world of Andreu is shattered, as the story begins, when he comes upon a wreckage where a neighbor and his son were involved. The almost unwatchable beginning marks the young boy forever. This was the Catalonia of the post war. The small town, in an impoverished rural area where a drama that began a few years before the initial tragedy, serves as the setting for this tale about the coming of age of Andreu. Farriol, the father of Andreu, has a lot to be afraid. He wants to flee to France, but ends up at his old mother's house where a lot of widows share the space with the bitterness of their lives. Andreu is sent by his mother, Florencia, to stay with his relatives. It is hard for her to keep working at a small factory and tending her young son without the husband that has gone away.In the new surroundings, Andreu, unravels secrets that are long buried. The defection of his father Farriol weighs heavily on the boy. The atmosphere is oppressive at best. School is not a pleasant place to be either. The only teacher is a man who should not be near children. Andreu discovers his father's role in a horrible act of castration performed on a young man whose only fault was to be a homosexual.The well-to-do family of the Manubens, where one of Andreu's aunts works as a servant, are the key to the well kept secret the whole town knows, but do not dare to speak. Florencia's only alternative is a sacrifice: she will let the rich Manubens take Andreu away so he can be educated. Florencia coming to visit Andreu at the catholic school, is shocked to find a totally changed Andreu as the story ends."Black Bread" was the winner of last year Goya for best film has its merits. Based on a novel by Emili Texidor and adapted for the screen by its director, Agusti Villaronga, it presents the oppressive era of the post civil war era in that part of Spain. The story is complex. Seen through the eyes of the impressionable Andreu, he watches the adult world around him, not being able to absorb the bizarre story behind it. Loving his father, Andreu feels betrayed as he finds out about an ugly episode in which his old man was involved, as well as his mother being sexually abused by a cruel mayor of the town. It is Asuncion who makes the ultimate sacrifice in order to see Andreu get an education, only to be met with his scorn.Young Francesc Colomer is Andreu. We have never seen the actor, so our impression is that his experience is mainly from working in television, not a guarantee to make a good performer in another medium. The best thing in the film is the Asuncion of Nora Navas who gives an excellent performance as the mother of Andreu. Sergi Lopez and Eduard Fernandez have done much better before. They are seen basically in supporting roles.

This movie has given me the same feeling of what another Spanish movie, "The Labyrinth" did to me several years ago. The cinematography, the lighting, the shooting angles, the colors are just top notched, but the story itself is not as good as the aforementioned elements. There are so many weird and depressed moments in this movie, sometimes even a bit messy. It seems to me that the Spanish people are still deeply haunted by their civil war and could never walk away or walk out of it. This is a very depressive movie full of symbolism. The bird lover father and his caged birds in the attic. The awkward and always confused childhood of the son, the local police chief, the often helpless mother, the whole family clan, the weird and a bit crazy left-hand missing girl...The Spanish dialog is sometimes too quick to be absorbed and understood even with the English subtitle. The struggle of the poor, as always, fell prey to the rich and the powerful. The adults always told their kids that what they did, good or bad, right or wrong, are solely for their kids and it's disgusting. No wonder the kid finally realized what the adults said were nothing but lies. His self denial, rejection and his recognition in the end was an inevitable result, gloomy and hopeless. This is a very heavy movie, just like the heavy colors in this movie.

Black Bread begins with a familiar scene: a man leads his horse and cart through a darkened wood, glancing around with unease at the various forest sounds which break the tense silence. A fairy-tale quality hangs over the scene, the images framed in wide angles and brought to life with rich autumnal hues; perhaps this will be a fantasy parable. When an assailant attacks the traveller, binds him in the cart, and leads the now-blindfolded horse to the cliff's edge, brutally smashing it in the face with a sledge hammer, our stomachs concomitantly fold alongside the illusion that this will be anything but sickeningly real. It is the first clue to us that we are not in for the easiest of rides; many of the images that will come to us will be disturbing, even distressing.Set in the years following the Spanish civil war, the film portrays the lingering dissent and tarnished political atmosphere of a nation divided. Andreu—the young boy who discovers the wreckage and is caught up in the post-civil war world of deceit that grips his small village as he attempts to discover the truth behind the "accident"—is sent to live with his grandmother, aunt, and cousins when his father—having fought for the losing side along with the murdered man—is forced to flee in fear of his own life. Andreu's journey to discover what happened to the cart and its riders takes him into the darkness within his village, his family, and even himself.It seems to me that there is a recurrent idea in modern Spanish-language cinema: to explore the issues of the civil war through the eyes of a child. Predating Black Bread, there are a number of films such as Butterfly's Tongue and Pan's Labyrinth which use the same concept. Examining the war through young eyes contextualises it, reducing it to its most fundamental perceptible elements and providing a fascinating perspective on (in the case of the former) the senselessness of condemning people by ideology alone and (the latter) the monstrousness of war and the frivolity of conflict. In a way, Black Bread achieves both of these things, though far more so the second. It demonstrates not the horror of war itself, but the horror of the people war creates; the capability for evil of those left living. The dark truths Andreu unearths are as horrifying as any war, the images he dreams up truly disturbing. The child protagonist is a proxy through whom we see things at their most stripped-down, basic, and shocking, exposing to us the sheer lunacy of humanity's follies. Surprising is the film's tackling of a particular societal issue which gradually becomes the centre of its comment upon our race, and the animalistic prejudices which, sadly, so often characterise us. Worth making mention of is the film's name, something of a motif referring to the secondary theme of class and social standing, commenting upon the sickening imbalance between the wealthy and the poor in times of hardship. Most films would do well to achieve half the depth Black Bread manages with this theme, and it is a secondary one.A worthy addition to the fray of Spanish civil war dramas, Black Bread is a surprisingly dark and deep examination of war's effect upon the lives and personalities of those who suffer through it. Condemning the capability of ordinary people to do extraordinary evil, it is an impactful portrait of guilt, responsibility, society, and family.