so hyun cho This film is worth to watch. cause it contains a lot about people's emotions and their reactions when they had a trouble.But for the most of all I really like the elder men's characters such as the police man, and the 2 men who are living in the useless land. their action was really great, especially those two friends who are always arguing each other. They are so cute and wise even though they are lack of power and physical energy.this film consists of quite lots of different stories and the characters in one small place in Spain. Near the San martin station. I am not sure where is it but the scenery of this film's background seems so nice and gives you some pictures of sunshiny Spain. at first the story seems extends a lot from the first story to another story and it also gives you some wondering how those stories gonna be connected. But don't worry, escape from the audience's wondering this film's different stories are quite close and connected in a good logic.This film reminds me one south Korean film that calls as 'Memory of murderer' and one Spanish film that is 'Volver'. That is because of the same item of those films that is especially those film's essential item is girl/woman's sexual harassment. and the way of solution of those films is that they show the whole story in the ending part of the film. They don't show everything in the first part. so that is how they can hold the audiences till the end of the film. and one more thing of this film, that is about the title of this film. the meaning and the nuisance of the concept 'night' is quite 'suspicious'. you don't know what is happening at the night time cause of course it is because of the darkness. So many accidents happen at the night time. and the police man try to find the right answer at the day time when everything is bright. so that is why this film's title has the word, night. and the sunflower is the part of the film's background place. that is quite beautiful and I hope that I could see more of the sunflower but that was only for the just first scene of the film. and I also like the music that is quite part of Spanish culture. I don't know exactly what kind of genre it is. But that music is really fit to that film. what I am talking about is the tango music when the elder man drinking alcohol and reminds his family through the pictures and he turns on the LP music. and the ending scene there is one more music that also feels so good.

kaaber-2 what's with those sunflowers? Well, never mind; The Night of Whatever is a beautiful film despite a slightly uneven plot that permits an aging and brilliantly acted Spanish equivalent of Lieutenant Columbo, LAPD, to dominate the last third of a film otherwise promising to catch a multitude of balls thrown into the air at the outset. "Sunflowers" is related (and can hold a candle) to films like "Crash" and "Babel" by its non-linear narrative and its description of the fatal encounters of hitherto unrelated characters. It's the film's great forte is that we actually get involved with them. The central scene in which an innocent old man is killed by our protagonists who act in the belief that he has brutally raped a young woman is stunning. We are beyond language in this scene - the characters act blindly - an mutely - on the wrong assumptions; a horrible act committed by decent, mistaken people. It may be compared with the gruesome burial of Dan Hedaya in Coen's "Blood Simple". "The Night of the Sunflowers" is definitely worth watching, and a Spanish more-mainstream alternative to Almodóvar.

jpschapira I am always amazed at the number of Spanish directors who make movies outside the country and, also, have their movies premiered in various countries. Jaume Collet-Serra with "House of Wax"; Jaume Balagueró and "Darkness"; Alejandro Amenabar with "The Others" and "The Sea Inside"; now a guy with the sequel of "28 Days Later" and, of course, Almodóvar. The fact is that, if you realize, they are surprisingly good at achieving terror (or at least suspense); if you consider the films mentioned above. Well, there's a man named Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo, and his film "La noche de los girasoles" ("The Night of the Sunflowers" in English) has definitely got some suspense, among other things.To begin with, the screenplay (by the director himself) has an unbelievable earnestness in its way of depicting people that have nothing to do with one another but, because of how small the world is, end up completely connected. How can I not get bored of movies that connect different things that ultimately become one? It's beginning to appear as an overly used technique with screenplays, but Sánchez-Cabezudo's sense of reality lets us forgive this little detail.His ingenuity comes from the fact that he presents each of the situations, with a very sarcastic written sentence in the black screen. Then, he places the characters in a completely remote area of the Spanish country where nothing interesting ever happens…Until now, and it's better if I don't reveal any of the plot; because the events that happen target these people's need for excitement.Try to think that the movie is the typical American 'slasher' where teenagers on the road end up in a deserted town and someone (or something) tries to hunt them down. Now change the teenagers for grown up people, and that 'someone' for nothing. There's no reason why something should be waiting for you in the most boring place; but that's the way 'slashers' think. In this unexciting environment, when one character comes from work, his wife asks how everything went and he has no better answer than: "The same as usual". Actually, this is a phrase that the script didn't even need to include, because the viewer understands the monotony the characters live with immediately. The actors portray all these mixed feelings with accuracy; specially Celso Bugallo as an old cop near retirement, and Vicente Romero as a younger one who, at one point, has to deal with a case while being drunk. The rest of the cast couldn't seem to be more normal than you and me; the kind of people you can imagine existing, with the slight difference that the scary music that plays in the background as they drive wouldn't play in their regular cars."La noche de los girasoles" captures your attention as the director captures the attention of his characters with his simple but original style; because the movie is, if anything, an exercise of perspectives, and one that you won't regret watching.

EduardoFS I found this film unsatisfying. It's a worthy effort by the writer/director with an interesting and original structure… but it's essentially marred by implausibility and lack of psychological depth, which is critical in a thriller. It starts off well with the violent rape of a woman, but then it veers into contrivance and far-fetched territory when her boyfriend –a man who has been cool-headed and sensible so far, he is a scientist after all- takes, with the help of a colleague, his brutal revenge on the wrong man, in a long, gruesome scene, in which unbelievably no word is exchanged between the victim –who can't imagine why somebody unknown would want to kill him out of the blue- and the aggressor, a man who strangely doesn't feel at any times impelled to verbalize the reason for his revenge before a clearly perplexed man. One of the things I hate when I see a thriller is when characters don't act as normal persons would in such circumstances, when the character who has committed the crime acts stupidly and, because of that, gets caught. That's what happens to the police officer who makes the 'indecent' proposal to the people who killed the wrong man, when he sees that his father-in-law and boss begins to smell a rat. Strangely, he crumbles and practically hands his confession to him, when it was clear that no one would ever find the dead body, and therefore he was in the clear. Also, it's not believable how the father-in-law ties all the loose ends and finds out that the man has been killed and by whom. There are no sufficient grounds to reach that conclusion. No dead body, no motive, no criminal record in the perpetrators. And the ending is completely unbelievable as well, when the father-in-law –after all the hard work- burns the money without wanting to know how the man was killed and why, and the killers don't make any effort to explain to him that it was somehow an accidental homicide, that it was afflicted on a man they wrongly thought had been the perpetrator of a rape and that therefore there is a rapist at large. This is all very contrived. You have the feeling that the characters are pieces on the writer/director's chess set, that he moves them as he pleases in order to get to his predetermined plot milestones, but it doesn't work or ring true, despite the actors' good effort. All the characters, except for the father-in-law, are weak, greedy and selfish, they all seem to be cast in the same mold, without shades. And at the end, for all its original structure, the intricate and meandering plot doesn't amount to much, and you leave the cinema with the feeling of having seen a small story.