Fragile

Introduction

An almost exclusively Spanish made film with the official title Frágiles which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2005, stars Calista Flockhart as Amy Nicholls who takes over as the night nurse at a condemned children`s hospital on the Isle of Wight.

With most of the hospital abandoned, the only ward remaining contains children with respiratory illnesses who are terrified of Charlotte, a ghost who the children call `the mechanical girl`. She has been terrifying children in the hospital for decades as she causes them physical harm, prolonging their stay. She is first `seen` in the film when one boy has his leg broken as he lies alone in bed but the staff look for rational explanations for his injury.

Maggie (Yasmin Murphy), a young girl with cystic fibrosis, who can see Charlotte is befriended by Amy and tries to convince her that the malevolent force is real and not just a figment of the children`s imaginations. Amy herself is emotionally fragile and seemingly dependant on prescription medication to help her cope with a past trauma and is more willing than the other staff to believe the children`s version of events.

Calista Flockhart is best known for her role in the TV comedy/drama series Ally McBeal and has appeared in several feature films; this is her first lead role in a feature film.

Video

A very clear and well presented anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer, with good clarity in the darker scenes and no problems in the exterior shots. Given that this has had a extremely limited theatrical release, with no showing in the UK, the source material should be of high quality, and is, emphasising Xavi Giménez` fine cinematography.

Audio

The DD 5.1 soundtrack is reassuringly atmospheric with well-placed aural stabs.

The English HoH subtitles are clear and easy to read.

Features

The only supplementary material is the `Making of Fragile` which, is not as the title suggests, a full `making of` featurette but a seven minute promotional piece.

Conclusion

As Fragile has not been released in British cinemas, I had not heard of it and knew nothing about it prior to watching the DVD. Furthermore, I have never seen Ally McBeal, the TV show with which Calista Flockhart is synonymous, so only know her as a name rather than an actress, so came to this film with no preconceptions.

Yasmin Murphy is excellent as Maggie, the conduit for the wrath of `the mechanical girl` and easily out-acts Flockhart as Amy, the emotionally fragile nurse with whom she has a real friendship. It is easy to see why this shockingly skinny actress has been predominantly confined to the small screen: she is reasonable as the nurse working with the children and trying to calm them, but when she is required to take on the more dominant role in the film she over-acts and undoes her earlier good work.

The supporting cast includes the well known character actors Gemma Jones and Richard Roxburgh who are fine as the sceptical administrator and ready-to-be-convinced doctor respectively with Elena Anaya the pick of the adult actors, as Helen another nurse,. There are medical mistakes that should have been addressed: Maggie is supposed to have serious cystic fibrosis yet she is never once seen out of breath or receiving physiotherapy; a ward of children with breathing difficulties (including one on a ventilator) would never be supervised by only two medical professionals and a defibrillator is used incorrectly.

Fragile feels very much like an Asian horror film, with the well used plot points of a malevolent ghost that only certain characters can see, a major character with a troubled past and an eerie location. With echoes of Hideo Nakata`s superb Dark Water and Alejandro Amenábar`s underrated The Others, Fragile brings little new to the table. Despite the medical errors, conventional characters, slightly formulaic and predictable plot where the second half does not live up to the promise of the first, Jaume Balagueró has made a reasonably effective and atmospheric chiller.

For genre fans, this is worth a watch as long as you try not to take it too seriously.