The Company Of Wolves (1984)

Tribute «British Gothic»

Directed by: Neil Jordan
Starring: Angela Lansbury, David Warner, Graham Crowden, Sarah Patterson
Duration: 95'

True to his adoration to all sorts of dark fairy tales, even when he dressed them up in a modern and realistic mantle, Neil Jordan found in the sexually charged «adaptations» of classic children stories by British author Angela Carter the ideal raw material for his second film. Atmospherically «The Company of Wolves» is probably the most authentic film ever made out of the spirit of the Grimm brothers’ gloomy stories. The film paints the Red Riding Hood myth in the maroon color of blood which suits it, by bringing to surface every underground, forbidden aspect and by imaginatively renewing not only the famous fairy tale but also the film mythology on the werewolf wave.

Through her granny’s narrations about «men who are hairy from the inside», the 13 year-old heroine will celebrate the end of innocence, the establishment of her female nature and the dangerous games of seduction. Jordan will unravel her coming of age through the misleading structure of narration within narration and illustrate it through the hallucinogenic texture of dreams, where the distinction between reality and fantasy, between truth and myth, remains seductively blurry. «The Company of Wolves» is among one of the 80s best films and indisputably one of the ornaments of fantasy cinema which remains a mystical cinematic fairy tale for adults.

Thanasis Patsavos

Screening within the framework of the Athens & Epidaurus Festival