Cría Cuervos (1976) review

Three soulless little girls - only stimulated by pop music - skulk around their house on summer vacation while Saura plays around with time and space: their parents are alive, then they're dead, then there's a dead hamster, then one of the little girls (Ana Torrent) may have helped kill them (or seen them die, whatever) ... but then maybe she didn't. The film unfurls smoothly - the cinematography is crisp - but instead of being challenged by the subject matter the plot trickery just comes across as an artificial (and distracting) ploy. Political subtext (the promiscuous father is a member of the military) about post-Franco-era Spain (and the children of the 'old regime') is curious but not as strongly developed as many seem to believe.