Cria Cuervos (1976)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Cria Cuervos (1976) – C. Saura

Superb blend of memory and reality channelled by a child who has seen and heard too much (played precociously by Spirit of the Beehive’s Ana Torrent).  Ana and her two sisters experience the deaths of their mother (played by Geraldine Chaplin) and father, an officer in Franco’s army, but not after bearing witness to fights over the father’s infidelity (which they later play-act in their bedroom).  Ana may be haunted by the spirit of her mother who appears in the house at night, repeating well-rehearsed lines from the past; or the vagaries of memory may lead to overlapping in the recall of the periods when Ana and her sisters subsequently lived with her strict but well-meaning Aunt Paulina.  Matters are made all the more mysterious by the fact that Chaplin also plays the adult Ana who occasionally speaks directly to the camera.  The title refers to an idiom “raise ravens and they’ll pluck out your eyes” – suggesting that parents are to blame for the consequences of their actions on their kids (and their kids’ adult behaviours).  No doubt, director Carlos Saura also meant the film to be a slap in the face to the Franco regime, suggesting that the years under fascism would have far-reaching and lasting effects on Spain.  But the picture works as a potent tale of childhood, where emotional events are writ larger on budding lives.