Rural death and decline

Set deep in a mountainous and backward province where the police are not too anxious to solve inconvenient crimes and the locals are hostile to townsfolk, it tells its story of murder and a violent attempted rape from the point of view of six characters.

The body of a teenage girl is discovered dumped in a field of sunflowers. A middle-aged travelling salesman watches the television reports while, in a small village nearby, the discovery of a prehistoric cave heralds the arrival of a geologist and his young wife.

The salesman, arriving near the village, spots the wife and tries to rape her. Injured and in shock, she identifies the wrong man. Everyone gets entangled in the mess, including feuding locals, the police chief planning his retirement and his deputy trying to escape the boredom of a bad marriage and a dead-end job.

Sanchez-Cabezudo divides the action into six chapters: The Man at the Motel, The Proper Authorities, Amos the Madman, and so on. It works itself out as a study of a moral climate caused by the slow and painful death of a rural way of life.

The acting is uniformly watchable and the atmosphere slowly but surely built as if Cold Comfort Farm wasn't very far away. The characters elude stereotype, even if there is a certain satirical edge to the proceedings that makes you smile even as you shudder.

Clearly Sanchez-Cabezudo is a real talent. He seems to know exactly what he is talking about.

The Night Of The Sunflowers (La Noche De Los Girasoles)
Cert: 15