A Colméia

Teresa (Geraldine Chaplin) is haunted by childhood trauma. She and her husband Pedro (Per Oscarsson) live in an isolated mansion. He's a successful auto executive, but at home, his wife is deteriorating. He starts playing her 'games' and it gets surreal.

This is a Spanish arthouse film. It's a little weird and it's a little slow. I would prefer a more isolated home with nobody other than the two leads. It's somewhat interesting to devolve into her father's relationship with her. That seems to have the juiciest possibilities. They do keep detouring into weirdness and they're not always compelling. I don't see pretending to be a dog as anything other than wondering if the pork chops are raw. I am interested in the crawfish for one reason. I don't know if people ate crawfish back then. I'm sure the Spanish did. They had to get them from somewhere. Did middle America other than Louisiana eat crawfish?

I expected more surrealism. It seems to be a lack of technical know-how or budget. There is a missed opportunity to go all out. Basically, a lot of this is these two actors playing around on a stage play. The father figure could do a great reveal, but this movie is a bit unfocused. It's trying to be profound and edgy. This has its moments.

This bizarre movie was made in Spain with an international cast and revolves around the games and fantasies of its main characters, husband and wife, Per Oscarssen and Geraldine Chaplin. Their upper middle class marriage is dull, so they venture out into the shadowy realm of role playing and fantasizing. I'm not sure in what language this thing was originally filmed, but it was a badly dubbed version that I caught a couple of times on late, late television. The husband begins by trying to get his wife to don some racy underclothes; she is repulsed by them and sends them down the garbage disposal! Taking another tack, the husband summons his unresponsive wife to the basement, where he's waiting, very solemnly, behind a teacher's desk. He orders her to sit in a high-chair, which just does hold her. He then proceeds to lecture her (taking on the role of her father) about her unacceptable marks in school. She now responds as a young girl, calling him "Daddy", and bowing her head in shame. He releases her from the high-chair and promptly puts her across his knee for a sound spanking with a ruler on her pantied bottom. The film devolves from this point, to where the games become darker, finally involving a pistol. Strictly a weird film, but could have been much better.

In their huge Brutalist mansion, Per Oscarsson and Geraldine Chaplin send the servants away and hide from visitors to role play.

It's a movie I watched through the end to see if there was any point to it other than the apparent co-dependency of the characters. In the end I could not find any other major object, other than a possible political theme about the relationship of Spaniard with the Franco government. That, however, is both too obvious and too rarified to have any real sense of serious subtext. Just as there are film critics who see fascism in every German movie from 1919 through the end of the Second World War, you can shoehorn every serious Spanish movie of the second half of the Franco era into political commentary. Does the fact that Miss Chaplin and the movie's director, Carlos Saura, were in a twelve-year relationship that ended about 1980 have any bearing on this movie? Quite possibly, but it's too personal for an audience not hipped to that fact.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the movie. Its a good movie but it quickly goes off the rails.

Geraldine Chaplin (who co wrote the script along with Carlos Saura and Rafael Azcone) plays a woman name Teresa who is in a passionless marriage.

Per Occarson plays Pedro, the husband who is runs a auto manufacturing plant and not very interested in wife.

She receives furniture that once belong to her late parents. After she received the furniture she starts to act strange.

One weekend alone, they participate in role playing games and things get looney fast. I found the role playing games outlandish. I laughed at some of the scenes thinking if alcohol was involved in the writing process. Also, I suspect some of the role playing ideas came from Chaplin. If that is the case, she must be quiet the character.

I do wonder if Saura referenced his first marriage. There were some elements from Chaplin's past in the film, such as she attend an all girls Catholic boarding school and had a stern father.

What message Saura wanted to convey gets lost by the outrageous role playing scenes. (I have read that one of the messages of the movie was about Chaplin having a difficult time in breaking away from her father's shadow)

What saved the film was the acting by Chaplin and Occarson. They did great and they worked very well together.

Also, this was the one and only time Chaplin co wrote a screenplay with Saura.

Interesting fact: At first, Saura had Per Occarson speak the dialogue in Spanish. However, due to his Swedish accent, the dialogue was spoken in English.

In post production the film was dub in Spanish. Chaplin dub her own lines in Spanish and another actor was Occarson Spanish dub voice.

If you want to watch a bizarre film where a person gets aroused by having crawdads crawling all over them. Then this movie is for you!

This film is not just one of the great results of Saura and Geraldine Chaplin creative and marital union, but one of the rare movies where the environment, the house here, takes the main role.

The huge, abstract, pre-minimalist concrete house (by Spanish architect Carvajal) transforms itself during the whole film running, setting the path to the main characters paranoia. The images that Saura produces are enigmatic, surrealist, funny, and in a strange way therapeutic, and they are deeply rooted in Spanish cubism and surrealism. It is probably one of the most contemporary and interesting film by the director, not recognized, yes, but a great unexpected value anyway.