I just finished it yesterday, should be easily placed as one of the best first works ever made in European Cinema. Eris was only 33 when he made this feature, overall he made three works over thirty years (with a hiatus of 10 years b/w each !).
The story is simple yet very well executed, almost perfectly. A six-year-old girl is perturbed by watching the movie Frakenstein in the village with her older sister, and with her supra-imposed accidental friendship with a strange fugitive that added to the experience. The movie exposed beautifully her PTSD (post-traumatic Stress disorder) in a nice blend of reality and nightmarish fantasy.
Beside the superb acting (the two sisters) and the story telling, Luis Cuadrado's cinematography is haunting. His landscapes added a ghostly aspect to the movie, but most importantly his interiors were shocking for their surreal sepia-like lighting, even only when one candle is flickering.
Few years later, the reason for this lighting was known, since Cuadrado was going blind slowly (he officially retired only three later).
I couldn't escape the resemblance between Nykvist's interiors (like in Winter Light) and Cuadrado's here... the sepia here substituting for the grey in Bergman's, but very similar close-ups and framing.
