‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ Celebrates 20th Anniversary at Cannes Film Festival

Déjà vu hit Ivana Baquero. Standing at the Cannes Film Festival, applauding a showing of “Pan’s Labyrinth”, Baquero couldn’t have imagined she’d be here, “Never would I have thought that I’d be able to celebrate a 20th anniversary of anything,” the 31-year-old actress let out a chuckle. “Being back here celebrating the movie with Guillermo last night at the screening,” the Spanish actress told “Access Hollywood,” “I was actually really surprised at how emotional I was.”

Two decades ago, the Barcelona native came to the festival for the first time at the age of 11 for the premiere of her feature film debut in Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy. A picture of youth with her hair in tight curls and posture slightly bent, Baquero walked the famed red carpet, sat through the R-rated movie, and stood for the film’s standing ovation. Her hands began to tire after what Baquero remembered was two minutes of non-stop clapping. Reports later confirmed the standing ovation lasted 22 minutes, which still holds the record as the longest in Cannes history. Baquero, taken aback by the warmth for the film, was shocked at the number, “It didn’t even feel like it was enough time.”

Tucked away in a hotel overlooking the Boulevard de la Croisette, bustling again with the hope of another celluloid discovery like “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Baquero understands that kind of praise is rare. It’s even rarer to experience it twice. After the film’s 20th anniversary screening at the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival, Baquero and del Toro stood for yet another lengthy applause. “We are, unfortunately, in times that make this movie more pertinent than ever,” the director addressed the crowd, “because they tell us everything is useless to resist, that art can be done with a f–king app, and we are facing things so formidable.”

Times have changed, but the film, according to Baquero, evolves with them. “I’ve kept watching the movie throughout the years, and every time I watch it, I discover something different, and I think it depends on what I’m going through in my life at that moment. I sort of fixate on different aspects of the movie,” reflected Baquero. This time it was the story’s villain, Captain Vidal. Set in Francoist Spain, “Pan’s Labyrinth” interweaves reality with a mythical underworld connected by a magical Faun who seeks out Ofelia (Baquero), believing her to be the reincarnation of a princess. Ofelia struggles to complete three tasks within the faun’s labyrinth while protecting her mother and unborn brother from her new stepfather, Vidal, who has dragged the family on his manhunt to eliminate any remaining Marquis (that is, the rebellion). Vidal manipulates, he murders, and remorse is in short supply.

“The cruelty and the brutality really stuck with me,” Baquero says without hesitation, “and I think it’s because of everything that’s going on in the world.” Baquero doesn’t expand on “everything,” but in a global climate filled with warfare and misinformation, and with del Toro’s nod to “app”-centric creativity, one can assume. “I don’t think the movie is just about the civil war in Spain in the 1940s. I think it’s more about how humans can be very cruel and how difficult it is to survive certain political realities and how, you know, sometimes you have to compromise.” She references the character Mercedes, Vidal’s housekeeper who is secretly supporting her brother in the rebellion, and Carmen, Ofelia’s mother, who marries the madman for economic security. As Baquero speaks, layers of del Toro’s script start to reveal themselves. “It makes you wonder, you know, what kind of role curiosity and hope and imagination bring to the table in order to fight that brutality.”

Of course, all of that was on the back burner back in 2005 when she auditioned for the lead role as a preteen. After a few rounds of readings in Madrid, del Toro sat in on her final audition and saw a fire in Baquero that was unmistakable. As the story goes, those in the room wept buckets, and he offered her the part on the spot despite her being two years older than he had originally written the character. He changed Ofelia’s age and gave Baquero a series of comics and movies that mirrored the world he was building, like the manga comic “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” and the drama “Grave of the Fireflies”, “mainly animation and war movies,” Baquero recalled. Light bedtime stuff.

Once she was on set, Ofelia’s coming-of-age story came into focus. “I think her curiosity really is something that resonated with me as a 12-year-old already.” Baquero, by her own admission, was an inquisitive child. “I think it was the only way to survive this world as a child actor, too, because it’s quite, you know, it is a world of adults, and I think a lot of kids come out of it a little bit, you know, traumatized and disturbed, but I really wanted to learn.” She made a pact with herself. “I approached it from this kind of joyful perspective, and that has definitely informed, again, the way that I’ve chosen to approach life.” She credits her parents for making sure she had a normal childhood (she stayed in school) and, of course, del Toro. “He’s so sensitive, he has so much truth to himself, and I think, you know, as a kid, you can kind of see that light in other people and be drawn to it.”

Light is best seen in the dark, and many of del Toro’s haunting images loom over audiences to this day, like the Pale Man who pops eyeballs into the palms of his hands. On set, the “eyeballs” were oval-shaped green screens pasted onto his hands, and for Baquero, shooting that sequence over multiple days became just another day at work, on a deadline. “That took a while to shoot, but it was a laugh. I mean, Doug Jones is the sweetest man, like absolutely zero to do with the Pale Man and all the creatures that he plays.” Jones’ other credits include the Faun and, later, The Amphibian Man in del Toro’s “The Shape of Water.”

When the film premiered at Cannes, it was a crazed elevator pitch, or rather the little movie that could, as Baquero puts it. “I think sometimes we forget that back then European movies with subtitles weren’t that big a thing, and people weren’t going to theaters in places like the United States, you know, in a commercial way to go watch a subtitled movie, and yet it was so successful back then.” Beyond the historical standing ovation, the film had a successful box office run due to word of mouth and went on to win three Oscars, including del Toro’s first, for Original Screenplay. He has since gone on to win three Academy Awards, two for “The Shape of Water” (2017) and one for his Netflix animated reimagining of “Pinocchio” (2022).

For Baquero, the role split her life into a “before” and “after,” and her “after” is just as bright. She starred opposite pre-“Elvis” Austin Butler in the adventure series “The Shannara Chronicles,” led the seafaring Spanish-language drama “High Seas,” and just wrapped a stint on “Spartacus: House of Ashur” with Graham McTavish of “Outlander” fame. And though her “Pan’s” reputation precedes her in every first meeting and every interview, she welcomes it.

“People ask me, ‘Does it bother you?’” But it doesn’t. If anything, it’s been more rewarding with time. “It’s a blessing.”

“Pan’s Labyrinth” will return to theaters this October.