FANTASIA 2021 | Ages Through the Eyes of a Girl in "All the Moons"
10/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars
The vampire and werewolf genres—really, the monster genres in general—have always provided conduits for filmmakers looking to use fearsome bodily aberrations as potent metaphors for the defining transitions in life. While the bodily transformations characteristic of vampires have always been a little less dramatic—fangs, pale skin, maybe some other bat-like features—they nonetheless provide ground for the dramas of aging, gender, race, religion, and sexuality to be writ to both fantastic and sensuously intimate degree.
In All the Moons, a vampire fantasy/drama from Spanish director Igor Legarreta, our vampires have none of the above characteristics. Aside from their aversion to sunlight, their lust for blood, and their immortality, Legarreta’s vampires could, in 1876, be mistook for your average hooded vagabond of the night. When a young orphan (Haizea Carneros) is taken in by a brood of these nocturnal spooks, the most drastic transformations she must reckon with are those she observes in the world around her—she, of course, being unbound by time. All the Moons is thus a somber portrait of a girl’s extraction from time; one that also cleverly revamps this existential premise to paint a tender parable of the precipice before womanhood.
When our lead—who later comes to be named Amaia—experiments with lightly burning herself in the sun, she discovers that her damaged skin can later be peeled off to reveal new skin underneath. Later, when she is taken in by a kindly farmer (Josean Bengietxea) and trotted around a Basque village (All the Moons is relayed entirely in the Basque language), she is confronted by another affront to her skin: the judgmental eyes of others, who look upon her as “other.” Amaia’s trials are extraordinary, contextualized by way of the gothic tone of the film, but they are, in the end, the trials unique to the prepubescent girl—the girl who must learn to shed her skin and find selfhood within humanity.
Legarreta dials back the “horror” elements one would usually expect in a vampire film, and in doing so crafts a tale that is more Beasts of the Southern Wild than it is Let the Right One In—an intimate yarn of magical realism that almost borders on becoming a chamber drama, in which the main character’s internal strife is visualized in a fantasy realm she must desperately find terms with. While more grounded in comparison to the histrionics of Zetlin’s 2012 film, and while more intent on its historical recreations, All the Moons is nonetheless a film rich in its world building and daring enough to take chances. Detailed and lavish production design assures that Legarreta’s world breaths, while young actor Carneros turns in a disarmingly powerful performance. She conveys both the hardened exterior of someone turning from reality, as well as the precociousness and frailty of someone who has not yet waded into the deep waters of maturity.
All the Moons is slower-paced vampire fare, and short on the grisly thrills that fans of the genre have come to love, but it is thick with the genre’s intoxicating moroseness, and an almost storybook-like structure with distinct phases. Furthermore, it is heightened with an added wistful and contemplative dimension, and this situates it alongside recent subversions of monster movie tropes like Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive. For a film about being “trapped” between worlds, as Amaia puts it, All the Moons recognizes the purgatorial nature of immortality, as well as the purgatorial nature of childhood, and this is where its pathos lies.
Along with fellow Fantasia Fest entrant On the Third Day, All the Moons is proof that Spanish horror films are the films to binge this fall.
COMPOSER
Pascal Gaigne
EDITOR
Mikel Serrano
CONTACT
Filmax
OFFICIAL WEBSITE
DIRECTOR
Igor Legarreta
WRITER
Igor Legarreta, Jon Sagala
CAST
Josean Bengoetxea, Haizea Carneros, Itziar Ituño
PRODUCER
Ibon Cormenzana, Ignasi Estape, David Naranjo, Sandra Tapia, Jerome Vidal, Koldo Zuazua
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Imanol Nabea