El niño de la luna (1989)

El niño de la luna: Directed by Agustí Villaronga. With Maribel Martín, Lisa Gerrard, Enrique Saldana, Lucia Bosè. Adopted by a treacherous semi-scientific cult where extraordinary mental powers are common, extraordinary 12-year-old David begins an archetypal journey across two continents to find his destiny as Child of the Moon.

“This is not what it sounds like. It is approximately a kidsu0026#39; mystical adventure movie, on the order of The Black Stallion, except for a nude sex scene, followed by what looks like a surgical procedure that I didnu0026#39;t understand. In structure this is a suspense movie, but the suspense is limited to escape and pursuit; the mystical or metaphysical element–the childu0026#39;s visions, the scientific-occult conspiracy to which he is delivered, and so forth–which one would expect to be churned into melodrama, as the same situation was in The Fury, is presented matter-of-factly, rather as magic realism.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAlastair Crowleyu0026#39;s novel of the same title has a different plot, but may still have inspired the movie, because it also involves a scheme by an occult group to generate a child with magical powers, and the film has about it an air of the 20s, as perhaps of Rex Ingram (one of whose films concerned a fictional Crowley).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe story has flaws: e.g. it forgets that the main characters have u0026quot;wild talents,u0026quot; and so their escape and pursuit is a matter of mundane running and hiding; for someone in the clutches of an authoritarian group with a recruited cadre of psychics, the child is able to sneak in and out very easily; charactersu0026#39; affections and determinations change without warning–all of which suit the kidsu0026#39; movie this (almost) is.”