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For the first third of the film, Erice introduces us to his lead characters in an off-hand fashion, such that it is wonderfully impossible to tell which characters we will end up following or what tangent(s) the storyline will pursue. The father is first viewed in his beekeeper garb out in a field, in a cut away from the girls watching Frankenstein, and the effect is that he does look like a fellow sad monster, face viewed through a mesh mask. (Two of Erice’s strengths are this use of juxtaposition through editing, and his use of a mixture of dissolves, fade-outs and lyrical but very subtle time lapse photography to upend the normal feeling of a day-to-day flow. Together, they keep things just out of kilter enough to render them mysterious.)

The mother is introduced in her bedroom, penning a letter which it seems is to a former lover, a soldier in the now-ended war perhaps, and then bicycling into town to mail it. By this suggestion, a rebel fighter who takes refuge in an abandoned barn, and is cared for by Ana in the final third of the film, could be taken to be this same soldier. It is only when the father, and later the daughters return to the house that we piece together they are indeed a family (Tellingly, Erice never films them all together at any one time. The only event in which all four are present at the same time is the sole family dinner that the film showcases, and Erice keeps them all isolated in their own shots during this sequence.)

As isolated as they may be individually, Erice also frames their isolation from the town. They are not the only four characters, but they are about the only ones given any depth, dialogue and/or significant screen time. We see a good portion of the village assembling for the Frankenstein screening, and observe the girls in their classroom setting, and see a few tableaus of the townspeople going about their day, but very little else that sets them off in contrast. One can imagine similar stories and films being made about the other villagers.

One of the most unsettling aspects of the film, ironically, comes from its golden/honey tones. Cinematographer Luis Cuadrado employs as great a use of the “magic hour” of sunlight as Nestor Almendros subsequently would in Terrence Malick’s 1978 feature Days of Heaven. There is abundant sunlight throughout the first half of the film but it all feels like it’s captured at just that moment when the sun is about to go down, the day is about to close, and it becomes both dizzying (to pinpoint exactly what time of day it is) and unnerving (a feeling of eternal sunshine). The second half features more post-sunset events (including an eerie sequence of Isabel and friends perilously leaping over a bonfire) and nighttime sequences (including when Ana runs away and the final moments of the film.) Cuadrado was in the early stages of blindness while filming Spirit of the Beehive and would take his life several years later.

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