El árbol de la sangre

This is very well acted, filmed, and produced, but disruptively structured, with a plot weakness and too much left unsaid. And call me a naïve idealist, but I was unhappy that the ending leaves Justice imperfectly satisfied. Or rather, that the main characters seem to have no problem with the final status quo.

And so, "The Tree of Blood" is difficult to rate. I wanted to know, what was the big secret of Rebeca's and Marc's relationship? Getting there was an interesting pain in the rear. Interesting, because a great deal is going on; the film is full of intrigue, action, love, lust, and betrayal; the main characters win our sympathy. A pain because of shifts back and forth in time, the necessarily large number of inter-related characters to track, and the short shrift given to a few details.

The setting shifts repeatedly between past and present, and in several scenes, characters of the present are shown standing in the action of the past, watching but not interacting. This disrupts the flow, yes, but not horribly so. Where the structure fails is that it falsely implies that Rebeca's and Marc's storytelling - the wrapper around the events of the past - are a fact-finding mission. You realize in the end that she had all the facts before they began, and only one key event was unknown to him.

The presence of Russian and Ukrainian mafias in Basque Country, and especially why they should happen to conflict with the other characters, was unclear. Perhaps - although I doubt it - events such as these are so taken for granted in Spain that they literally need no introduction. The rest of us could have used some clarity.

As symbology, the tree itself fell flat.

Julio Medem also directed "Sex and Lucia", which had a somewhat less convoluted plot structure and which worked much better in the end. And his "Room in Rome" was almost purely linear, but still spellbinding. "The Tree of Blood" just doesn't quite measure up to those works.