Trailer
Plot summary
Raised in an orphanage, Laura comes back to the house thirty years later with her husband Carlos and their adopted son Simón, who is seven years old. She intends to open the building again as a residence for disabled children. Simón talks about invisible friends, among them a boy he calls Tomás, and draws the boy with a sack covering his head. A woman named Benigna arrives asking questions about Simón, and Laura sends her away; that night Laura finds her in the coal shed, and the woman runs off. Simón then teaches his mother a game that grants the winner a wish, and repeats what his friend has told him about the woman who gave birth to him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Orphanage (2007)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- On Geraldine Chaplin's first day of filming, director J. A. Bayona hid under a bed and grabbed her leg during her scene, so the scream Aurora gives in the finished film is Chaplin's genuine frightened scream.
- Bayona test-screened over four hundred children across two months before casting Roger Príncep as Simón, whose own test-screening was one of the first for the part.
- Bayona cut parts of the script, among them what happened to the other children at the orphanage, because he wanted the film to focus on the character of Laura.
- Because some camera techniques were impossible in the real house in Llanes, parts of the orphanage were rebuilt in sound stages; after four weeks in Llanes the team shot its last ten weeks in Barcelona, over 80% of the film.
- The Orphanage took $8.3 million in four days in Spain from 350 screens, the second highest-grossing debut ever for a Spanish film and a bigger opening than Pan's Labyrinth's.
