A slow, thoughtful suspenser from Spain, Olive Films' THE 7TH DAY (aka "El 7º Día", 2004) lights the fuse early and lets it burn gradually toward what we fear will be an explosive conclusion.
The atmosphere is deceptively calm and pastoral at first as we join the inhabitants of a small village in Spain going about their everyday lives, the earthy traditions of the old barely giving way to the impatience and impetuous yearnings of the young.
Our main focus is young Isabel (Yohana Cobo), who is telling the story after the fact. She recounts how a boy and a girl from the Fuentes and Jiminez families have a whirlwind affair that results in the girl falling madly in love but the boy ultimately brushing her off.
The girl is crushed to the point of madness, and her highly unstable brother Jerónimo (Ramón Fontseré) takes drastic action by stabbing the boy to death. As he heads to prison for an extended term, the two families enter into a blood feud that results in violence and death on both sides.
The juxtaposition of such heated passions with such a relatively peaceful setting emphasizes the feeling that we're seeing a healthy organism suffering from a horrible, spreading virus.
The Jiminez family, a struggling young couple with three lively, lovely daughters, is accused of the most heinous crime for which the volatile Fuentes clan plots a catastrophic revenge, aided by the early release of the increasingly insane Jerónimo.
And yet for most of its running time THE 7TH DAY holds back on the action, letting its story unfold so gradually that we remain transfixed throughout, waiting for things to come to a head.
We see Isabel, the oldest Jiminez daughter, falling in love with a bad boy herself and going through the usual teenage angst. Other stories of small town life are told, familiar dramas that have unfolded since time began.
Meanwhile, the Fuentes family is anything but benign and normal in their simmering hatred, which is stoked mostly by a bitterly vengeful woman and her sociopathic brother. Wielding shotguns and spouting hate, the Fuentes family gives in to their blinding madness at last during a village festival in which no bystander is spared their wrath.
Performances are good and director Carlos Saura has fashioned a beautiful-looking film with an elegant visual style. The acoustic musical score is superb.
Subtle and matter-of-factly told, the story of THE 7TH DAY is tragic in that the innocence and promise of its younger characters must suffer the consequences of a long-simmering cauldron of hatred set to boil by events beyond their control. The final sequence is utterly shocking, and we're left wondering how, or even if, life will go on for the survivors.
YEAR: 2004
GENRE: DRAMA
LANGUAGE: SPANISH (with optional English subtitles)
LABEL: OLIVE FILMS
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 100 min
RATING: N/A
VIDEO: 1.85:1 Aspect Ratio; COLOR
AUDIO: STEREO
EXTRAS: NONE
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