Review of Cria! (1976) by Ld P — 07 Nov 2009

The translation is: Raise crows and they'll peck out your eyes. I interpret this as meaning rear your children to have love and respect for others. Or perhaps it means the same as King Lear's famous line: Sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child.

Cria Cuervos deals with a lot of painful emotions. In Madrid, the orphan sisters Irene, Ana and Maite are raised by their austere aunt Paulina together with their mute and crippled grandmother after the death of their mother and their military father Anselmo.

Ana is a melancholic girl, fascinated by death, after seeing her mother having a painful death and her father dead in bed. Little Ana (Ana Torrent) witnesses her father dying, after he has just had sex with his mistress.

Ana believes she killed her father by putting what she believes to be a deadly poison in his glass of milk. As she washes the glass Ana encounters her mother (Geraldine Chaplin) in the kitchen who affectionately chides her for still being awake so late.

It is only later that we realize this is wish-fulfillment on Ana's part as her mother died a few years ago. These appearances are not unusual. Ana is a thoughtful child whose daydreams merge into reality and are as tangible and emotionally affecting as actual events which alludes to the children's irrational compulsion for vengeance and self-destruction: Ana's innate wish for her father's death; her fascination with a mysterious jar discarded by her mother; the children's resurrection prayer after playing hide-and-seek; Irene's kidnapping nightmare.

Today the film is considered a political and psychological masterpiece and a classic of Spanish Cinema. The film's vaguely uncanny and disquieting tone is due to several factors, including its emphasis on death, loss, and decay.

Ana treasures a secret she feels will offer her ultimate freedom only when all unwanted authorities have died. Yet the film also merges moments of levity and ethereal beauty, providing intimations of hope and escape.

Ana Torrent also starred in Victor Erice's wonderful The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), another tale of a child pondering the meaning of death, and she is just as astonishing in Cria Cuervos. Geraldine Chaplin brings an ethereal air to the lost mother, as well as rawness to the troubled, grown-up Ana.

Chaplin remains one of the most fascinating and beautiful women ever to appear onscreen. A seamless story about memory and fantasy blurring together, Cria Cuervos is unquestionably Carlos Saura's greatest film.

Excellent film 5 stars.