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In the twilight of Francisco Franco's dictatorship, an eight-year-old orphan and her two sisters find shelter in the house of their stern aunt, trying their best to acclimatise to a new reality.
Carlos Saura's film is told through the perspective of a young child (and her older self) and interweaves past, present and future,
but also includes imagined and surreal scenes, albeit staged so
masterfully that it all remains stringent and comprehensible and the
political implications are apparent; again, Geraldine Chaplin convinces
in a double role (as the mother and as the adult child).
Halliwell*: "Elliptical story of childhood and of women trapped in a world dominated by men; it is ever less than watchable, but its meaning, possibly obliquely political, remains obscure."
