The 7th Day

This film is based on real events. The characters are fictitious. The crimes, however, were real. So ends this powerful 2004 film from the great Spanish director Carlos Saura, a revenge drama about feuding families in a remote Spanish village that ends in a brutal massacre. Best known to international audiences for glorious dance films such as Tango and Flamenco, Flamenco (as well as dance-influenced dramas like Carmen), Saura began his career with intense, emotionally volatile films about life under the oppressive Franco dictatorship and The 7th Day marks a return to those cinematic roots. The conflict begins when young Luciana Fuentes is jilted by her lover, Amadeo Jimenez, and Luciana's brother murders Amadeo, which begins a cycle of violence fueled by the fury of Luciana (played by Victoria Abril as an adult) as she poisons the hearts and minds of her brothers. The story is set in modern times (the real-life massacre occurred in 1990), but the portrait of small-town isolation and the culture of family clans, machismo, honor, and hard times in a desert village could be anytime in the past century. It is narrated by the teenage girl Isabel (Yohana Cobo), niece of the murdered Amadeo, as she reflects on the events with a mix of loss, regret, and her own attempts to make sense of senseless violence ("Small villages never forget," she ruminates). It's a provocative story and Saura directs it with an austere poetry and hard-edged clarity, although it remains one of his lesser-known films. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)