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El Norte de Castilla Reviews Juanma Bajo Ulloa’s ‘El Mal,’ a Giallo-Tinged Throwback With Provocative Bite

The latest critique highlights a visually forceful style that clashes with a slow, didactic structure.

Overview

  • The film, set in a Vitoria-Gasteiz portrayed as frozen in time, embraces an intentionally old-fashioned tone with clear giallo influences.
  • The narrative orbits a deliberately ambiguous female lead, withholding clarity about her identity and motives for much of the runtime.
  • The reviewer notes that the first hour moves slowly before the film unleashes transgressive set pieces and ironically upbeat musical cues.
  • Juanma Bajo Ulloa is praised for powerful, unsettling imagery that raises moral dilemmas, alongside dialogue the critic finds overly solemn and aphoristic.
  • The review criticizes a mid-film shift in point of view as needless and closes with a wish that the film had pushed further into unruliness.