Coven
I liked it quite a lot, although I understand it is not a perfect film. What caught me most was not so much the mystery of witchcraft as the rather terrible idea of inquisitors obsessed with finding demons where there are only young girls singing, dancing, talking to one another and trying to survive. Seriously: the more you think about it, the more absurd and sinister it becomes. The film works when it shows that clash between life and fanaticism, between women who still breathe and men who can only look at the world through fear, guilt and punishment.
The premise has a lot of strength because it starts from a historical barbarity that seems ridiculous until you remember it was real: accusing girls of being witches because they gather, sing, dance, laugh or simply do not fit the idea of obedience held by men in power. That is the film's best asset. It does not need to turn them into monsters or supernatural creatures; it is enough to show how the Inquisition projects its sick fantasies onto them.
I especially liked the feminist reading, because it is not only about "witches", but about who has the right to tell what is happening. The inquisitors arrive with a story already written: they want to find a sabbath, they want to see the devil, they want to confirm their prejudices. The girls, on the other hand, try to gain time, resist, manipulate that gaze and turn their executioners' ignorance into a chance of survival.
Amaia Aberasturi carries the film very well. She has a mixture of fragility, rage, intelligence and fear that makes the character more than just a passive victim. You can feel that Amaia is trapped, but also that she thinks, calculates and looks for ways to use the men's own fantasies against them. That tension between vulnerability and cunning gives the story a lot of life.
Alex Brendemühl also works very well as the face of that institutional madness. His inquisitor is not scary because he is an exaggerated monster, but because of something worse: because he turns his obsessions into procedure, his prejudices into investigation and his desire to dominate into a supposed defense of faith. The film is right when it lets us see how ridiculous that power can be without taking away its ability to destroy lives. He is pathetic, yes, but extremely dangerous.
Visually, I found it very powerful. It has beautiful, dark, damp photography, with a light that turns closed spaces into interrogation rooms and the exteriors into a kind of threatened freedom. There are carefully composed shots, a tenebrist atmosphere and a use of song and the body that give the whole film a strong personality. The film works better through the senses than through pure intrigue.
I also liked how it uses songs. Those female voices are not just a pretty ornament, but a form of community, memory and defiance. Faced with men who want to translate everything into sin, pact and devil, they sing as if holding on to the one thing they have not yet been stripped of. There the film finds a very beautiful energy: music as resistance, as mockery and as a way of remaining themselves.
That said, it also has flaws. The first half can feel somewhat repetitive and insistent, as if it spends too much time on the same idea before finding its best rhythm. At times the message is so clear that the film leaves little room for ambiguity. We know who the victims are, who the executioners are and what it is denouncing. That does not invalidate it, but sometimes makes it feel more schematic than it could be.
Not all the emotional drama reached me with the same force either. There are very beautiful moments and others where the tone becomes a little solemn, almost too aware of its own importance. When the film rests on the tension between the girls and the inquisitor, it works very well; when it tries to rise too far into allegory, it can lose some naturalness. For me, the best is in the concrete: looks, songs, fear, confinement and negotiation.
Even so, it seems to me a valuable film. I like that it does not go for easy scares or conventional supernatural horror. The true horror is not whether there are witches or not, but those men convinced that they have the right to interpret women's bodies, voices and freedom as a threat. That is what remains most: the stupidity of fanaticism, but also its brutality.
In the end, it remains for me a notable, imperfect, visually beautiful film with a very powerful idea: the monster is not in the forest, but in those who arrive with crosses, laws and certainties to crush any form of life they do not understand. I liked it because it turns an absurd persecution into something unsettling, because it has very strong images and because it makes clear that, sometimes, what the powerful call witchcraft is nothing more than freedom seen through sick eyes.
The premise has a lot of strength because it starts from a historical barbarity that seems ridiculous until you remember it was real: accusing girls of being witches because they gather, sing, dance, laugh or simply do not fit the idea of obedience held by men in power. That is the film's best asset. It does not need to turn them into monsters or supernatural creatures; it is enough to show how the Inquisition projects its sick fantasies onto them.
I especially liked the feminist reading, because it is not only about "witches", but about who has the right to tell what is happening. The inquisitors arrive with a story already written: they want to find a sabbath, they want to see the devil, they want to confirm their prejudices. The girls, on the other hand, try to gain time, resist, manipulate that gaze and turn their executioners' ignorance into a chance of survival.
Amaia Aberasturi carries the film very well. She has a mixture of fragility, rage, intelligence and fear that makes the character more than just a passive victim. You can feel that Amaia is trapped, but also that she thinks, calculates and looks for ways to use the men's own fantasies against them. That tension between vulnerability and cunning gives the story a lot of life.
Alex Brendemühl also works very well as the face of that institutional madness. His inquisitor is not scary because he is an exaggerated monster, but because of something worse: because he turns his obsessions into procedure, his prejudices into investigation and his desire to dominate into a supposed defense of faith. The film is right when it lets us see how ridiculous that power can be without taking away its ability to destroy lives. He is pathetic, yes, but extremely dangerous.
Visually, I found it very powerful. It has beautiful, dark, damp photography, with a light that turns closed spaces into interrogation rooms and the exteriors into a kind of threatened freedom. There are carefully composed shots, a tenebrist atmosphere and a use of song and the body that give the whole film a strong personality. The film works better through the senses than through pure intrigue.
I also liked how it uses songs. Those female voices are not just a pretty ornament, but a form of community, memory and defiance. Faced with men who want to translate everything into sin, pact and devil, they sing as if holding on to the one thing they have not yet been stripped of. There the film finds a very beautiful energy: music as resistance, as mockery and as a way of remaining themselves.
That said, it also has flaws. The first half can feel somewhat repetitive and insistent, as if it spends too much time on the same idea before finding its best rhythm. At times the message is so clear that the film leaves little room for ambiguity. We know who the victims are, who the executioners are and what it is denouncing. That does not invalidate it, but sometimes makes it feel more schematic than it could be.
Not all the emotional drama reached me with the same force either. There are very beautiful moments and others where the tone becomes a little solemn, almost too aware of its own importance. When the film rests on the tension between the girls and the inquisitor, it works very well; when it tries to rise too far into allegory, it can lose some naturalness. For me, the best is in the concrete: looks, songs, fear, confinement and negotiation.
Even so, it seems to me a valuable film. I like that it does not go for easy scares or conventional supernatural horror. The true horror is not whether there are witches or not, but those men convinced that they have the right to interpret women's bodies, voices and freedom as a threat. That is what remains most: the stupidity of fanaticism, but also its brutality.
In the end, it remains for me a notable, imperfect, visually beautiful film with a very powerful idea: the monster is not in the forest, but in those who arrive with crosses, laws and certainties to crush any form of life they do not understand. I liked it because it turns an absurd persecution into something unsettling, because it has very strong images and because it makes clear that, sometimes, what the powerful call witchcraft is nothing more than freedom seen through sick eyes.
Mini Review: I liked it quite a lot, although I understand it is not a perfect film. What caught me most was not so much the mystery of witchcraft as the rather terrible idea of inquisitors obsessed with finding demons where there are only young girls singing, dancing, talking to one another and trying to survive. Seriously: the more you think about it, the more absurd and sinister it becomes. The film works when it shows that clash between life and...