Stars: Sarah Kendall, Alice Lowe, Barunka O'Shaughnessy, Clare Thomson

Director: Dewi Humphreys

Summary: The surreal gags come thick and fast in this all-female sketch show, starring Alice Lowe, Sarah Kendall, Barunka O'Shaughnessy and Clare Thompson. With spoofs targeted at the likes of Madonna, Amy Winehouse and the ladies from SEX AND THE CITY, to name but a few.

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Victor Erice's hauntingly beautiful The Spirit of the Beehivefeatures one of the most unforgettable child performances in the history of cinema. Hailed as the greatest Spanish film of the 1970s, Erice's visually elegant "poem of awakening" takes place in a small Castilian village in the early 1940s, as echoes of the Spanish Civil Wart can still be heard throughout the countryside. It is here, in this richly rural atmosphere, that six-year-old Ana (played by six-year-old Ana Torrent) is introduced to alternate world of myth and imagination when she attends a town-hall showing of James Whale's Frankenstein, an experience that forever alters young Ana's perception of the world around her... and her ability to mold reality to her own imaginative purposes. Is she using her imagination to escape what is essentially a bleak reality, or is she protecting herself with an inner world of innocence, to counter the darker worldview of her slightly older sister Isabel?

While her emotionally distant parents go about their mundane daily affairs, Ana's world becomes the film's mesmerizing focus, and The Spirit of the Beehiveunfolds as an enigmatic yet totally captivating study of childhood unfettered by the strictures of reason. In Erice's capable hands, young Ana Torrent really isn't performing at all; her presence on screen is so natural, and so deeply expressive, that you almost feel as if she's living in the story being told--a story that retains its mystery and beauty in equal measure, full of visual symbolism and metaphor (including the title, which yields multiple meanings), yet never self-consciously "arty" or artificial. Simply put, this is one of the timeless masterpieces of cinema, produced at a time when Franco's repressive dictatorship was finally giving way to greater freedoms of expression. No survey of international cinema is complete without at least one viewing of this uniquely moving film.--Jeff Shannon

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	' B E H I V E: Beehind The Scenes' featurette
Year:	2008
Release Date:	May 4, 2009
Runtime:	118 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C4 D V D 10263
Keywords:	English, Comedy, General, Beehive
Genre:	Comedy