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…

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…

“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…

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…

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…