Carlos Saura | 1973 | Spain | 102' | EN subs

Ana y Los Lobos is a feverish journey to a place where the Spanish aristocracy and its moral decay run rampant. Ana (Geraldine Chaplin) is a foreign governess hired to work in a house in the north of Madrid. The three brothers José, Fernando and Juan, their mother and the children are a microcosm of the values of the Spanish dictatorship (religion, military masculinity, sexual repression and nostalgia). Ana is the exotic element that prompts the self-destruction of this social order.

In the last years of the regime (1936-77), getting through the grooves of censorship, Carlos Saura made a series of films (Cría cuervos, El jardín de las delicias…) portraying the collapse of the traditional familiar structures, their influence on children and the hypocrisy of the political and ecclesiastical elite. Ana y Los Lobos is crucial because of the moment in which it was made and its scathing critique. The eeriness and sophistication of the images and Geraldine’s interpretation are stunning; the result is hard to forget.