45 - The Orphanage

    The blurb for this movie is pretty vague, and it didn't sound too compelling.  "A woman brings her family back to her childhood home, where she opens an orphanage for handicapped children. Before long, her son starts to communicate with an invisible new friend."

    That doesn't quite explain it.  She doesn't actually get a chance to open the orphanage.  Her son disappears pretty early in the movie.  From there, it actually gets more interesting.

    The movie is shot well.  There are plenty of evocative shots, and it teases things nicely, so you're always left curious about things.  The story is good, but the plotting is peculiar.  There are a lot of symbols, which can be meaningless, but they appeal to our sense of attaching meaning to similar things.  The ending is very nicely done.  I only wish that the last scene weren't there.  It seems like it was done specifically to spell things out for people who weren't paying close attention.