[What I've seen of Saura's work]—The Hunt and The Garden of Delights—has been rather onerous: gravy-rich photography and ponderous symbolism, like the worst Czech and Polish and Latin-American films. A Spanish moralist without Buñuel's humor makes for a long evening.

Much brighter news from Saura with … Cousin Angelica….

[The] casting mixture is slightly confusing at first, but it's quickly sorted out, and its various points—of psychic implication and inheritance—are neatly made. (p. 26)

Saura handles the interplay of time with mostly extraordinary skill. The whole picture is directed with an ease that comes from no compulsion to prove anything, which was not true of the earlier Saura that I saw. There are now sharp edges of humor….

For a foreigner the picture's chief appeal is two kinds of travelogue: physical and psychological. The former, purely of landscape, should not be underrated…. The latter, from...