Ana y los lobos

Ana (Geraldine Chaplin) is the new foreign nanny for three girls of a troubled family in an isolated mansion in Spain. José (José María Prada) is an uncle who seems to maintain control of the household and trying to impose his will on Ana.

I did read some analysis of this film as an allegory of the Spanish fascist dictatorship. I'm out of my leagues with all that. I don't have the understanding of their domestic politics during that time. Without all that, this is still compelling as a psychological horror. It would however be missing its internal spirit and a lot of this is going over my head.

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.

An interesting and moving picture analyzing the mechanisms of power in the Spanish traditional family in relation with the Francoist dictatorship . A British governess (Geraldine Chaplin) comes to an isolated house to take care of the children of an offbeat family. There she has a confront a peculiar family . The complainer matriarch (Rafaela Aparicio) is an ill old woman usually shooting and often on the edge of nervous breakdown and her three outlandish sons are really rare people : the religious Fernando (Fernando Fernán Gómez) who lives in a cave , the erotic and married Juan (José Vivó) who writes naughty letters to Anna , and José who loves military dresses . The presence of Ana disturbs the three brothers with fateful consequences resulting in a shocking finale .

This film was notorious in the years of the Franco's downfall dictatorship including provoking and polemic issues , including some surrealist elements in Luis Buñuel style . It depicts a family microcosmos reflecting the convoluted society at the time , but it results to be too much symbolic and simplist . Ana y los Lobos 1973 is one of Saura's undisputed masterpieces and fundamental in his filmography where shows efficiently some peculiar characters and shot at the height of his creativity, in a period cultural difficult , where the enormous censorship of the political regime exacerbated the ingenuity and imagination of the scriptwriters. Early Seventies director Carlos Saura analyzed the mechanisms of power of the reactionary Spanish bourgeoisie in an irregular trilogy , about scripts written in collaboration with Rafael Azcona and for the producer Querejeta . It begins with the unsuccessful ¨El Jardin de las Delicias¨, continues with this excessively symbolic and elongated production ¨Ana y los Lobos¨and ends with the most successful ¨La Prima Angelica¨. Seven years later, Saura returns with the same characters to perform under his own script, ¨Mama Cumple 100 Años¨, in a comedy tone , far from symbolism and with irregular results. Main and support cast are frankly well . Geraldine Chaplin is splendid as the sexy nanny , and , the dysfunctional family is finely played by Rafaela Aparicio as the grieving mother obsesssed by death , Fernando Fernán Gómez as the eremite , lonely son , Jose Vivo as the sex-obsessed husband , Charo Soriano as his suicide-tendence wife and José Maria Prada as another strange brother adding to the extravagant family .

It contains an evocative cinematography by Luis Cuadrado , Saura's regular . The motion picture perfectly produced by magnificent producer Elias Querejeta was originally directed by Carlos Saura , a good Spanish movies director. He began working in cinema in 1959 when he filmed ¨Los Golfos ¨(1962) dealing with juvenile delinquency from a sociological point of view . From his first film : Los Golfos , Saura has got a long and prestigious career . He subsequently made LLanto por Un Bandido (1964) starred by an European all-star-cast . Saura is a well recognized filmmaker both nationally and internationally, and in proof of it he won many prizes among which there are the following ones: Silver Bear in Festival of Berlin for Peppermint Frappé (1967) and the successful La Caza (1966) that also won numerous prizes in International Festivals and in which four characters facing each other and terminating into a jarring burst of violence . Saura achieved Special Jury Awards in Cannes for La Prima Angélica (1974), in 1973, and for Cría Cuervos (1976), in 1975. Also, the film Mamá Cumple Cien Años (1979) got an Oscar nomination in 1979 as the best foreign film, and it also won the Special Jury Award at the San Sebastian Festival. He subsequently made ¨Deprisa , Deprisa¨ based on facts about juvenile delinquency in Spain since the 80s , as he tried to take a position in favour of outcast people and he got to make a both lyric and documentary-style cinema . In 1990, he won two Goya , The Spanish Oscar , as best adapted screenplay writer and best director . Saura became an expert on Iberian musical adaptations as ¨Carmen¨ , ¨Amor Brujo¨ , ¨Bodas De Sangre¨ , ¨Sevillanas¨ , ¨Iberia¨ , ¨Salome¨ , ¨Fado¨, ¨Flamenco ¨ and even recently Opera as ¨Io , Don Giovanni¨ . Rating : 6.5/10 . The pick will appeal to Geraldine Chaplin fans.

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.

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.