Anna und die Wölfe

Geraldine Chaplin goes to a Spanish home to tutor two small, motherless girls, and finds a bunch of maniacs; the grandmother is subject to rages and fits; one brother writes her anonymous pornographic letters; another dresses in antique military uniforms and interrogates her; the third has whitewashed a cave on the property and moved in to try to attain spiritual perfection. As the three men lust for her, Miss Chaplin uses the opportunity to observe and torment them.

Commenters claim there is a satire of Franco's Spain lurking behind the bizarre situations. Perhaps. Miss Chaplin's motives remain obscure to me. Sometimes she seems the amused observer, sometimes the bewildered participant. If there was an attempt at satire, it was sufficiently subtle that the censors, always on the lookout for such things, didn't notice it.

I must admit that I liked this film a little less than Cria Cuervos and Elisa Vida Mia. The reason is that its political allegory is too straightforward. But I liked the doomed atmosphere of the film. The character of Fernando (the religious brother) is unforgettable, and his interaction with Ana is the most interesting storyline in the film as she is both appalled by him and attracted to his way of life, as if understanding why he wants to escape from the world. By the way, the actor Fernando Fernan-Gomez also plays Geraldine Chaplin's dying husband in the movie 'City of no limits'. There is a touching moment when the whole family gathers looking at the horny brother's wife attempting suicide, Ana hugs one of the girls and then Fernando takes the girl away from her. The ending of the film is too abrupt, but I still recommend Ana y los lobos to anyone who likes the film of this director.

The young but traveled Ana (Geraldine Chaplin) arrives in a manor in the countryside of Spain to work as nanny of three girls and finds a dysfunctional family: the matriarch (Rafaela Aparicio) is a sick old woman obsessed by death and having constant nervous breakdown; her son José (José María Prada) was raised dressing girl's clothes until his First Communion and is obsessed by military clothes and stuffs; Juan (José Vivó), the father of the three girls, is a pervert since his childhood that writes pornographic letters to Ana; his wife Luchy (Charo Soriano) has suicidal tendencies; and the mystic and religious eremite Fernando(Fernando Fernán Gómez), who was inflicted to flagellation in his childhood, lives recluse in a cave. The presence of Ana disturbs the three brothers with tragic consequences.

In the 70's, "Ana y los Lobos" was very successful in Brazil and one of my favorite movies of my adolescence. This film is actually a political allegory of Franco's dictatorship in Spain, with the mother and the three brothers representing the Spanish society of those times. The omnipotent mother is the old Spain; the oppressive José represents the authoritarianism of the military government of Franco; Juan the repressed sexuality and Fernando the Catholic Church. The story is bizarre with a weird atmosphere and characters and top-notch performances, with Geraldine Chaplin extremely beautiful and sexy. The DVD released in Brazil by the Brazilian distributor Platina Filmes is actually a VHS converted to DVD, with low-quality of image. The worst is the unforgivable and shameful mistake in the subtitles in Portuguese that wrongly translates, for example, "seho" (seal, in English) as cello, misleading in a non-sense way the viewer that can not understand Spanish. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Ana e os Lobos" ("Ana and the Wolves")

A sometimes powerful, sometimes silly (the levitation scene) and always heavy political allegory. And I do mean allegory. You literally cannot move without bumping into a character/symbol and as usually occurs when humans stand for abstractions like The Military, The Church, or Moral Squalor, they lose whatever quirks and contradictions make them interestingly human and instead, as happens here, become stiff, posturing caricatures.

I will say, however, that director Carlos Saura's idea of wrapping his condemnation of Francoist Spain in a feminist package, so to speak, where hatred of and desire to dominate women is the engine that drives the whole corrupt enterprise, is an inspired one and gives this film a force that cannot be denied, so that the ending is more shattering than simply over the top. And Geraldine Chaplin's alternately playful and scornful performance as the embodiment of Threatening Womanhood is, in my opinion, the best thing she's done. Give it a B.

Another allegorical and surrealist tale typical of its director serves as a biting criticism of Franco-ruled Spain, at times irritating and disturbing and in the end devastating.