Cria!
December. 20,1976Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.
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Reviews
Just perfect...
Don't listen to the negative reviews
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
Like Saura's recently-viewed THE HUNT (1966), this is considered among the greatest Spanish films ever – and deservedly so. Incidentally, it also assumes a child's viewpoint throughout – an aspect shared with yet another movie that ranks very highly on such national polls, i.e. THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973). Featured in the central role (the second youngest of three girls involved) is the same talented performer – Ana Torrent – as the protagonist of the latter masterpiece by Victor Erice.As with Saura's own COUSIN ANGELICA (1974; which I have also just watched), then, this adopts fantasy elements – Torrent is constantly seeing her deceased parents around the house and, at one point, even 'witnesses' herself committing suicide by jumping off a rooftop! – and interchangeable actors – the writer/director's then-current partner, Geraldine Chaplin, plays both the sickly mother and Torrent's character as an older woman – to tell a similar tale of a marriage break-up (actually two) and the resulting illicit affairs – which Torrent always somehow manages to be the sole witness to – but, thankfully, without resorting to the heavy-handed political/religious allusions which marred the earlier film. A supposedly discarded bottle of rat poison also provides black comedy touches throughout as Torrent is forever scheming to use it on herself, her grandmother or her aunt but whether she actually ever does is left open-ended! Another strong point here is the soundtrack, making repeated use of a melancholy piano tune and an equally haunting pop song. The meaning behind the film's title is anybody's guess – unless the mentioned bird's reputation for ill omen is being equated to the kids' difficult relationship with their extended family: they have been placed in the care of their attractive yet unmarried aunt in a household that also includes their mute, wheelchair-bound grandmother and an earthy middle-aged maid.
A quietly brilliant film, Cría cuervos is a touching and funny but profoundly serious meditation on the end of the Franco era. Clearly there is a wealth of material in the basic metaphor of children growing up around dysfunctional and disingenuous parents. Carlos Saura goes out of his way to make a more ambivalent film though. The children are not on the cup of adolescence but buried in the depth of childhood - the only conventional passage is that of the denouement which shows the girls on the way back to school. Within the film there is all manner of quietly teased-out misdirection and surrealism: the constant overlay of Ana the child and woman, and the same with her mother, dead and alive; a child's plain-faced obsession with death, which, simultaneously, she fails to really understand; a plate of chicken's claws, ominously preserved in a fridge.So there's the meditative oddity of Jodorowsky but also the child's eye perspective of Bergman (Fanny and Alexander was yet to be made though). I think the most affecting thing may be the mono-pace of the camera and editing, which never rushes to artificially stimulate the drama. That's left to the story as seen and told by Ana. Ana Torrent, in this role, is fairly miraculous, composed but engaged in almost every frame, usually in close-up. Geraldine Chaplin is also wonderful as the mother/older Ana, maintaining the opaque gaze of a Spanish woman at the heart of the injustices of Franco's warped society. An economical, uncomplicated, poetic film of lasting power. 8/10
I took this film in a video library and watched it 3 times. It is one of the most powerful films I have ever seen. The techniques in the film are very modest but it's amazing what the director does with them. I liked very much this sad and quiet girl. The scene where her pet dies and she buries him is so solemn and heart-breaking. I felt sad about the old Grandmother who watches the old pictures in sadness. I also liked Geraldine Chaplin, she is very good in this role, her intimate bond with the daughter, and how she looks at Ana with sadness when the girl doesn't notice it. The scene where the girl imagines her mom combing her hair is mesmerizing. Maria's pain is very palpable.By the way I found some interesting information about this film. Geraldine Chaplin was dubbed in the episodes where she plays the grown Ana. It was done because the actress has a slight British accent which is not annoying or too prominent (for me at least), but the point is that she plays a grown girl, and it would be rather weird if a grown person acquires an accent in one's mother tongue if this accent did not exist during the childhood. So it was an intelligent consideration of the director.I recommend this movie very much.
Cría Cuervos offers you one hundred five minutes of pleasure. I can´t find words to describe the work of Ana Torrent, she is perfect (her face remember a japanese manga´s character, her work is gratefull!).Geraldine Chaplin's character smells sad, loneliness, the most deep pain. When she play the piano with her thins fingers she makes you cry. The director Carlos Saura must to be between the mounsters and genious of the international cinema history.8/10 HJN.-