スペイン内戦後の小さな村を舞台に、ひとりの少年がある事件を契機に恐ろしい決断を下すことになる姿を描いたミステリードラマ。カタルーニャ地方の小さな村の森の中で、少年アンドレウは親子の死体を発見する。死の直前に「ピトルリウア」と謎の言葉をつぶやく女性の姿を目撃したアンドレウは、内戦によって心に深い傷を負った大人たちがひた隠す真実に否応なしに巻き込まれ、生きていくためにある決断を下す。スペインのアカデミー賞と呼ばれるゴヤ賞で、作品賞をはじめ9部門を受賞。2011年スペイン映画界の話題をさらった。
製作費: $6,000,000 (9億円)
興行収入: $3,770,657 (6億円)
推定収支: $-2,229,343 (-3億円)
※製作費・興行収入はTMDBのデータを参照しています。収支は(興行収入 - 製作費)で算出したFindKey独自の推定値であり、広告宣伝費や諸経費は含まれません (1ドル=150円換算)。
脚本: Agustí Villaronga / Emili Teixidor
音楽: José Manuel Pagán / Oriol Carrasco
制作: Isona Passola / Lluís Ferrando / Elisa Plaza
撮影監督: Antonio Riestra
制作会社: Massa d'Or Produccions / TV3
A different story in the after times of the Spanish Civil War. Cleverly, it mixes a thriller with the destruction of the naïve childhood of the main character. Who is good and who is bad, who is true and who lies is unclear as the events that lead to the current situation. A must to see in nowadays Spanish film making.
Agustí Villaronga's "Pa Negre" (Black Bread) belongs to a vital tradition of Spanish cinema that uses a child's perspective to reveal how fascism poisons communities from within. Like Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" and especially Víctor Erice's "El Sur" (1983), this film understands that childhood under fascism means the premature death of innocence. Young Andreu doesn't just grow up; he's forced to witness the moral rot beneath the surface of his post-Civil War Catalan village. The film operates on dual registers. On one level, it's a mystery structured like an elaborate game of Clue, with Andreu piecing together who did what and why in the aftermath of a father and son's death. On another, darker level, it's an unflinching examination of humanity's extremes: the cruelty that the wealthy perpetrate for their own gain, and the profound sacrifices others make in the name of survival and loyalty. The title, "black bread," refers both to the rationed, bitter bread of poverty and to the darkness that permeates every corner of the story. Villaronga creates the perfect atmosphere for this narrative. The film is raw, shot in deliberately unsaturated colors that capture post-war deprivation and moral grayness. The acting is superbly appropriate, grounding the gothic horror in lived reality. This was the first Catalan-language film to represent Spain at the Academy Awards, a politically significant achievement given Catalonia's brutal cultural suppression under Franco. However, the mystery at the film's core is dense, perhaps too dense. The threads of betrayal, collaboration, and revenge are difficult to follow in their entirety, leaving the viewer occasionally disoriented. The film needed either more runtime to let the narrative breathe, or a less ambitious screenplay. At 8/10, "Pa Negre" is a haunting, important work that occasionally buckles under the weight of its own complexity. But what it captures, the poison that fascism leaves behind, lingers long after the final frame.
