Cria
It is no accident that "Cria!" is so reminiscent
of that other mysterious Spanish gem about childhood, "Spirit
of the Beehive."
When director Carlos Saura saw that production with
Ana Torrent, its tiny, incandescent star, he was
determined to make a film with her. Her black eyes
seem fathomless, reflecting unblinkingly on the puzzles
of death, life and love that pass before her. They
are the eyes of a miniature Jacqueline Kennedy, deep
wellsprings observing tragedy and contemplating judgments.
In Victor Erice's "Spirit of the Beehive," Ana
was traumatized by seeing the film "Frankenstein," by
death inflicted on a prisoner she befriended, by
her own imagination that raced beyond the bounds
of reality.
The central fact of death is with her again in "Cria!",deaths in which the character, Ana, feels somehow
implicated. The title of the film is a Spanish proverb: "Cria
cuervos y te sacaran los ojos." (Bring up crows
and they will pick your eyes out.)
Walking around in the early dawn when she should
be sleeping, she hears the noises of passion from
her father's bedroom, then strangled cries, a woman
- half-dressed - rushes out, and the child stares
at her implacably. The father is dead; his daughter
is untouched.
With this introduction, Saura draws us magnetically
into the vulnerable arena of childhood with Ana and
her two sisters , but we see the life around them
through little Ana's eyes. In them, remorse and sorrow
and remembered joy are reserved for their beloved
mother, who died some years earlier. Her image appears
again and again, displacing the intruders left to
care for them: a taut, unfulfilled aunt and silent,
smiling, paralyzed grandmother.
There is a constant subtle shift in Ana's frame
of reference: past, present and future. A deliberate
element of confusion is introduced with Geraldine
Chaplin playing both the mother and Ana as an adult,
but it never overwhelms the delicate balance of this
fragile memoir in which Ana tries to sort out the
responsibility for the deaths she has had to face.
Saura's direction is extraordinarily sensitive as
Chaplin and the child create a charmed magic circle
of love between them. Chaplin, all tender radiance
with the child, is the nagging neurotic with her
husband; her face drawn with aching needs, real and
imaginary pain.
There is a moment when the child senses why her
father was attracted to the healthy sensual wife
of his best friend; Ana absorbs with calm, slightly
confused interest, the intimate gossip of the lusty,
full-bodied woman who is the maid of all work in
this contemporary upper-class Madrid household.
Although Chaplin's role is subordinate to Ana's,
all of her potential as a truly great actress comes
alive under Saura's masterly handling, both as script
writer and director, of nuances of character. But "Cria!" is
not merely a vehicle for two star performances; it
is a profoundly observed and truly haunting film
about the perils of passage through childhood.
San Francisco Chronicle July 27, 1977
|
