["Cousin Angélica"] is a voyage into the past quite unlike any other I've ever seen in a movie, both because Spain's recent history is so particular and because of Mr. Saura's way of always dealing with memory so that it becomes an extension of the immediate present.

"Cousin Angélica" is not simply about Luis's childhood before and during the civil war. It's about Luis's recollections of his childhood as he renews contacts with his family….

Mr. Saura doesn't use conventional flashbacks, which are as isolated from time and feeling as postcard pictures are removed from a tourist's actual experiences ….

En route once again to his relatives, the tearful Luis is comforted by his mother and father. There is nothing exceptional about this scene except that when we see the middle-age, cardigan-wearing Luis being soothed by parents younger than he is we are suddenly presented not only...