Victor Erice’s second feature (1983), based on a story by Adelaida Garcia Morales, seems to bring back some of the haunting obsessions of his first, the wonderful The Spirit of the Beehive (1973): the aftermath of the Spanish civil war, the magical spell movies exert over childhood, and a little girl’s preoccupation with her father and the past. This subtle spellbinder ends somewhat abruptly, reportedly because the film’s budget ran out, but it seems to form a nearly perfect whole as it is: a brooding tale with the poetic ambience of a Faulkner story about an intense father-daughter relationship and a mysterious and resonant past. English critic Tim Pulleine has observed that a reference to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt points to an elaborate system of duplication underlying the film’s structure, seen in shots and sequences as well as themes (north and south, father and daughter, real and imaginary). Omero Antonutti (Padre padrone) plays the father, Sonsoles Aranguren the daughter. (JR)