PARA ELISA (review)

Review by Joshua Gravel

Ana is in her final year at University and needs money for a post graduation class trip.

Her family can’t pay for it so she answers an ad posted at her school looking for a nanny. When she shows up Ana soon discovers that the nanny job was greatly misrepresented to her. The mother, Diamantina, is an eccentric lady who may have ulterior motives for bringing Ana into her dark and mysterious home.

Para Elisa is a tight film, which borrows heavily from other films, mainly House Of The Devil and Misery with a little Spider Baby for good measure, to create its own story.

Fortunately writer/director Juanra Fernández infuses enough of his own story and style to keep it from becoming derivative.

The film is shot with an eye toward the creepy as the film mostly takes place in one apartment which is shot in a sufficiently unsettling style with enough antiques and shadows which harken back to a gothic sensibility of the past.

The acting is pretty good all around; the three female leads portray their situations very well while being mildly hindered with character clichés. Luisa Gavasa portrays a wonderfully imposing and overbearing matriarch while Ona Casamiquela is certainly a believable victim throughout.

Oddly the most interesting and underdeveloped character is the title character of Elisa, played very convincingly crazy by Ana Turpin. Although as much as I would like to know more about the character of Elisa and her backstory, it is also easily the thing that could ruin the film.

This very well may be a good example of the “less is more” philosophy, which is missing from so many genre films these days.

As a whole Para Elisa is a tense and creepy film with a couple shocking moments, which makes it well worth checking out.