Spain’s Foreign Oscar nom: The Orphanage

Despite the number of qualified candidates, Spain's foreign Oscar pic was a shoe-in from the start. Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage (who'll get it U.S preem later this year thanks to Picturehouse Films) was as Variety states it in a three-film shortlist with Emilio Martinez-Lazaro's Spanish Civil War true-life story “13 Roses” and Jose Luis Garci's early 20th century rural drama “Luz de domingo.”  

The movie echoes Henry James' “The Turn of the Screw” and other literary and cinematic works (including “The Others”) that investigate the power the dead have over the living, especially over children in the most imaginative and vulnerable stages. It concerns Laura (Belen Rueda), who as a child spent time in the Good Shepherd Orphanage before being adopted. For her the orphanage was not a horror house but the dearest refuge, where she had a half-dozen close friends her age, and which she recalls so fondly that after her marriage to a nice doctor, Carlos (Fernando Cayo), she persuades him that they should buy the place and make it their home. Also known as “El Orfanato.”