I saw this film when it was first released in the UK then quickly saw it again, to fix it in my memory as I feared its commercial life would be short. Later I saw it on BBC television and recorded it on videotape, which is the best I have been able to obtain so far. Infuriatingly, it is now available on import, but ONLY on Bluray, which I don't have. Suffice it to say that this film is one of the saddest yet sublimely beautiful films in history. At its heart is a mystery, sketched out for the viewer, but with much left to be surmised, while at the same time Estrella knows even less. She thinks her father has a magic quality, but as she matures she realises that the magic hid some deep unhappiness. She needs to know more about this man, but we know that her search is likely to be fruitless. This is why the "unfinished" ending is, to me the perfect place to end. The "South" is used as a metaphor for some place other, a place we may dream of, but not visit or know. Maybe a place of romantic dreams, a place where we imagine we can find lost loves. This is the father's tragedy : essentially a good man who seems to be living a private life of impossible dreams, when what he has in reality is so precious. This is heartbreakingly beautiful cinema, I can't recommend it highly enough.

There's no doubt that Erice is one of the best Spanish directors ever, and each film he's made is an absolute masterpiece. I shall not comment anything about the plot, the acting, not even about cinematography. I'm writing this post in order to give IMDb's users a little information which, I think, may solve some questions about this film (why its plot is so "episodic"? why the DVD copy seems a low-quality one? etc): well, actually "El Sur" is an unfinished work! The production was stopped due to money trouble, and Erice wasn't able to complete his film with Estrella's travel to the mythical South named in the title. Many years later, Erice himself explained this film's odyssey in a recorded interview for the Spanish TV.

It must be almost twenty years since I saw this movie (and I saw it only once, when I was in Japan), but the memory of this movie remains in me like an old haunting dream from childhood. Cinematography at its best. I think, for the first time, this film made me think that the best media for poetry is not words, but vision.I would want to recommend this to anyone who loves "Spirit of the Beehive" and thinks it cannot be surpassed. But alas, I don't know how you get this movie in USA with English subtitle.

Victor Erice's little masterpiece earned itself a permanent place in the repertoire of Spanish film-making. Not surprisingly: Franco was dead and Spain had bravely struggled out of a difficult transition to form a now much-respected democratic and modern nation. If art - whether literature or cinema - is to reflect that important step in a country's advance, perhaps "El Sur" (The South) is one of the four or five Spanish films of the last twenty five years which best marked that change. Beautifully filmed in natural lighting, even in the interior of an old rural house (Ezcaray, La Rioja), the deep feelings transmitted between daughter and father reveal a delicacy so often missing in more banal entertainment. Young Sonsoles Aranguren and Icíar Bollaín play delicious roles which swing rather uncertainly from late adolescence to young womanhood as the daughter who attempts to fathom out her father (and in so doing, herself) with an extraordinarily powerful performance which obliges the intelligent viewer into the film. And Omero Antonutti plays the exact counterpart, carefully balancing his role such that he never overshadows his "daughter's" interpretation. The scenes and dialogues are enchanting, never over-acted or otherwise exaggerated; at all moments Erice maintains full control over the film's development, giving just enough touch of exquisiteness and sensitivity, allowing the film to move unhurriedly through simple but moving scenes to the predictable outcome. Here indeed is moving theatre-cinema: the understanding spectator will leave with a certain mixture of feelings if he knows a little of Spain and its people; he will not leave unmoved, cold.