kinda fitting that i ended up rewatching this one and pan’s labyrinth close to each other as there’s certain parallels i might have forgotten about otherwise.

strong contender for my favorite of his movies

idk if i've remarked here that del Toro is very good at putting seemingly incidental details to further use, reincorporating them later in the film in various fashions, but this film included a very clear multi-part example i liked.

1. at the start of the film there's a moment where Elisa masturbates in her bathtub as part of her daily pre-work routine.
2. a while later, she's eating cornflakes and her neighbor makes a joking reference to their having been invented to discourage masturbation (my impression is that this is not in fact true and that unlike Graham's, Kellogg's ideas about diet were separate from his campaign against masturbation), which he remarks didn't work.
3. much later, when she breaks her beloved out, she keeps him in her bathtub, which due to the reemphasis of masturbation by the corn flakes joke, now reminds us of that initial masturbation in the tub.
4. soon thereafter they fuck in the bathtub.

@alyssa .........i don't remember her masturbating in the bathtub??? i’ve watched this movie twice!??????

@aescling not sure what you thought was going on in the opening scene, when she gets in the bath and the camera pulls away to not be looking into the tub and she puts her legs up on the side of the tub and there's a repeated noise of movement in the water then lol

(alternately possibly it is not as memorable as i thought the corn flakes thing made it; i did not remember it from when i watched the film originally but i also forgot that they explicitly had sex lol)

@alyssa ........ i don't remeber that............

@aescling guess ya gotta pay more attention on your next rewatch :P