It deals with a single middle-aged man : Jose Luis López Vázquez who from Barcelona goes to bury his mother: Encarna Paso in Segovia, Castilla y León .There he's lodged at the old house of his aunt Pilar : Lola Cardona. Along the way, he recalls his past events in 1936 when the Spanish Civil War took place. There he meets his cousin Angelica : Lina Canalejas as an adult , Clara Fernández as a little girl , with whom he had his first romance , but the old flame rekindles again.
A thought-provoking and brooding film dealing with a mature man and his records , loneliness and nostalgy for past times and including some surrealist elements in Luis Buñuel style . Sensitive film full of feeling , haunting mood-pieces , wonderful images and sense of style . This film was notorious in the years of the Franco's downfall dictatorship including provoking and polemic issues . ¨La Prima Angélica¨¨ is one of Saura's undisputed masterpieces and fundamental in his filmography where shows efficiently some peculiar characters and shot at the height of his creativity, in a period cultural difficult, where the enormous censorship of the political regime exacerbated the ingenuity and imagination of the scriptwriters . It follows the wake of Ingmar Bergman's Fresas Salvajes or Wild strawberries in which the main role becomes involved into his own infancy records . Here stands out the extraordinary acting by the great Jose Luis López Vázquez as the single man who is disturbed by past happenings by living again himself those deeds from Civil War . He is well accompanied by a good cast , such as : Lina Canalejas , Encarna Paso , Fernando Delgado , Marisa Porcel, Luis Peña , Julieta Serrano, among others .
It contains an evocative cinematography by Luis Cuadrado , Saura's regular . The motion picture perfectly produced by magnificent producer Elias Querejeta was stunningly directed by Carlos Saura , a good Spanish movies director. He began working in cinema in 1959 when he filmed ¨Los Golfos ¨(1962) dealing with juvenile delinquency from a sociological point of view . From his first film : Los Golfos , Saura has got a long and prestigious career . He subsequently made LLanto por Un Bandido (1964) starred by an European all-star-cast . Saura is a well recognized filmmaker both nationally and internationally, and in proof of it he won many prizes among which there are the following ones: Silver Bear in Festival of Berlin for Peppermint Frappé (1967) and the successful La Caza (1966) that also won numerous prizes in International Festivals and in which four characters facing each other and terminating into a jarring burst of violence . Saura achieved Special Jury Awards in Cannes for La Prima Angélica (1974), in 1973, and for Cría Cuervos (1976), in 1975. Also, the film Mamá Cumple Cien Años (1979) got an Oscar nomination in 1979 as the best foreign film, and it also won the Special Jury Award at the San Sebastian Festival. He subsequently made ¨Deprisa , Deprisa¨ based on facts about juvenile delinquency in Spain since the 80s , as he tried to take a position in favour of outcast people and he got to make a both lyric and documentary-style cinema . In 1990, he won two Goya , The Spanish Oscar , as best adapted screenplay writer and best director . Saura became an expert on Iberian musical adaptations as ¨Carmen¨ , ¨Amor Brujo¨ , ¨Bodas De Sangre¨ , ¨Sevillanas¨ , ¨Iberia¨ , ¨Salome¨ , ¨Fado¨, ¨Flamenco ¨ and even recently Opera as ¨Io , Don Giovanni¨ . Rating : 7/10 , notable . The pick will appeal to José Ñuis López Vazquez fans.
