The Night of the Sunflowers (La Noche De Los Girasoles) (15)

Dir: Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo, 2006, Spain/Portugal/France, 123 mins, Spanish with subtitles
Cast: Carmelo Gomez, Judith Diakhate, Mariano Alameda, Manuel Morón

Written and directed by Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo, Night of the Sunflowers is a gripping thriller that employs an inventive narrative structure to illuminate the circumstances surrounding two shocking crimes, and their unimagined, rippling effects on a moribund Spanish rural community.

The body of a murdered girl is found dumped in a field of sunflowers. Contrasted with this grim discovery is the uncovering of a prehistoric cave in a nearby village, which raises hopes of regeneration through tourism. Speleologist Esteban (Gomez) arrives in the region to investigate the caves with assistant Pedro (Alameda), and girlfriend Gabi (Diakhate). Also passing through the area is a travelling salesman, dubbed simply ‘the man at the motel’ (Morón). As Gabi waits for Esteban and Pedro to return from their expedition, she is horrifically assaulted. Esteban seeks retribution, but a botched revenge attempt has unexpected consequences.

The film unfolds over six episodes with a different character coming to the fore. With each chapter beginning further back in time and ending further ahead, the story advances at a nerve-racking pace. This narrative structure cleverly and rapidly establishes key details without repetition, while simultaneously explaining the story’s complexities. Night of the Sunflowers is classic Hitchcockian (whom Cabezudo cites as an influence) film noir: crime, melodrama, betrayal, deception, the use of fragmented structures, such as flashbacks, which disrupt the narrative sequence and not forgetting the audience, always one step ahead. These elements are relocated from a typically urban backdrop to a rural setting, with violence presented as an external problem linked with outsiders. Though character types in the film are fairly conventional - anti-hero, village madman, good cop/bad cop, the uniformly excellent performances avoid clichéd portrayals.

At the heart of Night of the Sunflowers are ordinary protagonists trapped in unwanted situations beyond their control, nevertheless the moralities of the characters are dubious. Esteban, Pedro and Gabi are genuinely devastated by the effects of a misdirected act of violence, but are they right to accept a convenient solution to a crime they didn’t mean to commit? Cabezudo remains ambiguous over their choices. The suspension of normal ethical standards in extreme circumstances creates a moral vacuum, explored here to unnerving effect.

The film’s barren landscape is symbolic with the gradual erasure of rural locations reflecting the characters’ moral deterioration. Cabezudo explains: ‘The agony of the rural areas is also the moral decay of the characters, and, more concretely, the death of one of them could serve as a metaphor for the slow extinction of the rural world’.

There are no tidy resolutions to the film’s fatalistic vision, and though the disparate story threads are woven into a structurally unified conclusion, the film imparts no clear lessons. To its credit however, Night of the Sunflowers never flinches from its subject matter, and remains for Cabezudo, an accomplished debut feature that will provoke and challenge.

Saba Chaudry