Excessive fawning over an interesting but puzzling film...

Rating: 6/10 (21 May 2007)

Yes, UK critic Mark Kermode went overboard about it, but his is one voice. (And he was wrong about the Borat movie, too, as far as I was concerned.)
Firstly, this is a very well made film, of that there's little doubt. Both the reality and fantasy elements are technically faultless. But as my wife and I were left puzzling after watching this film, "Why?"
If you separated the Reality element from the Fantasy you'd be left with two stories, one about a young girl and her troubles with a masochistic stepfather who is struggling with his father relationship (or lack of it) and is fixated on the production of a son. This is told well, if simplistically, and in excessively brutal detail. (Scenes of torture, disfigurement and other graphic violence.) Running concurrently with this is the same girl's introduction to her role as a Princess in the Fantasy world.
What was the connection between them? I couldn't see it. All other aspects of the storytelling were unsophisticated, (the role of the partisans and insiders, the inevitable breaking of the rules in the girl's fantasy "test"), so the likelihood of some deep and subtle meaning seems unlikely.
So you can have half an OK tale about the end of the Spanish Civil War, and half an OK fantasy tale. Intertwined, for no obvious reason. (But very well made, oh yes, I mentioned that already!)