assured debut (slight spoilers)

I was impressed by the assurance of the direction.

Nothing flashy, nothing mannered: the story was confidently told, with visual flourishes only where narratively appropriate (e.g. the underwater shots in the midnight swim, the diving, and the midnight feast). For the rest of the time, the storytelling had the same sense of containment and tension that the school itself did.

People who are sniffy about directors with a commercials/music video background should see this film - it's a good counterexample to what's often assumed about those sort of directors' reliance on technique.

Performances were good all round, with a great arc for Eva Green's character. She did well, and her not-entirely-native-Brit accent only showed through once or twice. The film-makers did well to handle her charisma - it's easy to make Eva Green hypnotically gorgeous, but they also managed to make her unpleasant as the story unfolded, to the point where her beauty was eclipsed.

Great work from the costume department, even if we might be forgiven for wondering where a woman on a school-teacher's salary in the 1930s got all those changes of clothes.

Very good score, too. Given the importance of the Spanish character, perhaps the Spanish composer helps to align the heart of the film with that character (Fiamma - though she has an Italian name and her book is from an Italian publisher...).

I thought this was an interesting example of how a film can take place in pretty much just one place and still have plenty of tension and development. A chamber piece, sure, but an intriguing one.