Los girasoles ciegos

I saw this last month at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. The screenplay by the late Rafael Azcona was adapted from the widely popular Alberto Mendez novel and the setting is northern Spain in the immediate post Spanish Civil War period. Elena (Maribel Verdu) has assumed the role of head of the household as her left wing school teacher husband Ricardo (Javier Camera) is being south by the right wing government and is believed by them to have been killed but in fact he is in hiding in the house. Another left wing fugitive is Lalo (Martin Rivas) who has also been hiding in the home but now must flee to the safety of the Portugal border with his pregnant wife and daughter of Elena and Ricardo, Elenita (Irene Escolar). Elena and Ricardo's youngest child Lorenzo (Roger Princep) is enrolled in a catholic school where his teacher Salvador (Raul Arevalo) is a former military conscript who has returned to studying for the priesthood and is a part-time school teacher and sympathetic to the right wing government. He also is obsessed with the beautiful and supposedly widowed Elena and is torn between trying to win her affections or becoming a priest. From director Jose Luis Cuerda it offers nice cinematography from veteran Hans Burman and beautiful art direction from Baltasar Gallart but it's nothing more than a made for TV movie like you might find on Lifetime. I'm sure the film must have fallen far short of the novel. It comes across as forced, silly and even laughable in places where it isn't supposed to be funny. I suggest you pass on it and I would give it a 5.5 out of 10.