José Luis Borau's experience as a director of spaghetti westerns shows in his skillful construction of hunting scenes, his choice of eerily beautiful soundtrack music, and his loving depiction of wooded Spanish landscapes outside of Madrid. Borau once told an interviewer that he wanted to make a film about the forest, and one of the most compelling aspects of the film is the cinematography. Overall, the story plays like a cross between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's idyllic story of criminals (Ángel the poacher and his girlfriend, Miraglos, a runaway from a boarding school) and Psycho's freaky mother-son relationship, with a handsome ex-boyfriend renegade and a group of doltish Franquist functionaries thrown in to the mix. Charming and weird and visually riveting.
Review of Poachers
