Popular reviews

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  Review by Leah 2

  Es obvio que la película es una metáfora de España bajo el dominio de Franco. La madre representa los líderes viejos e inconexos, mientras sus tres hijos representan tres facetas grandes de la cultura española bajo el regimen de Franco. José representa el militarismo y la obsesión con la masculinidad, que se debe al hecho de que su madre lo vistió con ropa de mujer cuando era niño. Fernando representa el énfasis en la religión dentro de la cultura y la idea de vivir para un bien superior, pero cuando Fernando era un niño, su madre le dio un dedal puntiagudo, lo que lo llevó a tener un fetiche por el masoquismo. Juan representa la sexualidad reprimida y la idea…

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  Review by shookone ★★★½

  very Mother!ly - pure allegory, pure symbolism, stripped of a narrative corset, filtered of anything that would allow to create a surface. there is only the look beneath it - franconian fascism, friends!

  it's probably also readable in other contexts though - after all military, church and chauvinism are essential components of many rotten societies. interestingly the matriarch creates, the patriarchs with their small egos, their incapabilities, their impotence take the rap and enhance their cowardice, moral decay, ethical depravity and finally their death drive to full effect.

  this here is quintessentially a very feministic tale I'd argue. not only the fetishist and objectifier is a rotten animal, but also the militarist in his narcissistic sadism and the self-proclaiming cleric…

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  Review by AbandonChimp ★★★½

  In terms of allegorical subtlety, this one ranks somewhere between The Pilgrim's Progress and Animal Farm.

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  Review by Jay D 's Watching ★★★½

  Moral of the story: Fascism, coming to it from outside, feels like a sad, ridiculous, joke, until suddenly, horribly, it isn't.

  
  (Also, Spain is a beautiful country, but, uh, there's some baggage there, Saura seems to be saying)

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  Review by Quiller ★★★★½

  “My sons…. You have to understand them. José seems authoritarian, despotic, inflexible. That’s his duty; he protects us.”

  Although Geraldine Chaplin appeared in her father’s Limelight as a child, she got her big break as an actress in David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago, which was filmed in Spain. Spain, of course, was ruled at the time by the dictator Francisco Franco, who actively courted film producers from other countries in the hope of infusing Spain’s economy with foreign cash and rehabilitating its reputation following the Spanish Civil War. Paradoxically, Franco was simultaneously suppressing dissident Spanish filmmakers at home.* I’m not sure if Chaplin consciously thought about it, but her decision to collaborate several times with the Spanish director Carlos Saura, with…

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  Review by Avirup

  Saura's Teorema, in a playfully sinister way. Not so subtle allegory of Franco's Spain. Church, military, state all get attacked with blunt force. It's playful, absurd until it's just brutal and grim; that ending, wow. All the performances are great but especially Geraldine Chaplin and Fernando Fernán.

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  Review by C_elegans ★★★★ 2

  Nach inzwischen drei Filmen von Carlos Saura muss ich erkennen, dass ich schlicht und einfach zu wenig über den Franquismus weiß, um den Symbolismus in Figuren und Handlung immer richtig deuten zu können. Die Allegorie auf die Gefahr, innerhalb eines stabilen, autoritären System aufgerieben und zerissen zu werden, ist in Anna und die Wölfe aber sehr deutlich zu erkennen. Geraldine Chaplin war wohl in etwa die Muse Sauras. Mit ihrem guten Schauspiel bildet sie hier so etwas wie den freiheitlichen Gegenpart zum bestehenden System, der aneckt und rebelliert und dann die Konsequenz der Unveränderlichkeit erfährt. Ana y los lobos, wie der FIlm im Original betitelt ist, hat mir bisher von Sauras Werken am besten gefallen.

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★

  Very blunt anti Franco allegory with a conservative family men many weaknesses and violence exposed by the presence of an outsider woman. Very narrow conceived, but kept exciting by a mix of Chaplin’s performance, the movie’s one non predictable element, and Saura’s taste for occasional excess.

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  Review by Leesah Sea ★★★½

  ANNA AND THE WOLVES is a 1973 drama from Spanish director Carlos Saura. This is the first film I’ve seen from his filmography, and this ended up being quite a bit to digest. Anna arrives at a manor on the countryside where she is to be the nanny of three young girls. It’s not long after her arrival that we begin to see how dysfunctional the family is. There are references of wolves being out in the countryside and to watch out for them, but the only wolves are the men of the household. They’re all after Anna for different reasons. Three misogynists – one wants to rape her, one wants to humiliate her, and the third wants to kill…

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  Review by Kiko Vega ★★★★★

  La pistola nacional

  Menos mal que Azcona intentó ocultar el cadáver cinco años más tarde con La escopeta nacional, porque el impacto de los lobos debió ser importante.
  Lo que en la de Berlanga serían risas y ácida parodia de un determinado Spanish way of life, aquí es casi La matanza de Texas franquista en los exteriores madrileños más desolados. Patria y familia, toxicidad. España.
  Terror elevado, mi arma.

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  Review by teamgal ★★★★ 1

  Carlos Saura's political allegory, ANNA AND THE WOLVES, narrowly avoids turning into a full-on horror flick and traffics much of the same terrain as a surrealist fable, all while aping the style of a heated, family melodrama.

  Anna arrives mysteriously at the slightly dilapidated villa of an inbred, cultish, fascist family of Spanish aristocrats. The building appears out of nowhere in an otherwise entirely uninhabited landscape. The narrative goes off the rails fairly immediately as this new governess (a terrific Geraldine Chaplin) finds herself surrounded by three clammy, crazy, leering men, each of whom wants to control her (or worse). Her three little wards aren't much better. The women of the household — a grotesque matriarch confined to a sort…

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  Review by Four Winds Movie Reviews ★★★½

  Young Anna (Geraldine Chaplin), an American, arrives at a secluded estate in rural Spain to function as a nanny for what she curiously discovers to be a dysfunctional household. Consisting of 3 sons and their morbidly preoccupied mother, whose ailments exhibit hyperbolic hysteria rather than physical illness. The sons Juan, Fernando, and Jose, all consumed with unique obsessions, intrigue Anna and stand as metaphoric symbols of Franco’s reign while simultaneously preluding to other ambiguous suggestions. With its cloistered settings and characters, Anna and the Wolves taps into a peculiar wavelength of surrealist iconography, including fetishization, control, and patriarchy. One of 9 works Chaplin and Saura collaborated on.