[Both Cria! and Cousin Angélica] are about childhood and both of them are by the man who is, next to Buñuel, the most distinguished Spanish director. But that is where their similarity ends. Cria! is a dark and melodramatic comedy, highly original in plot, about how a child misperceives her actions and their consequences in the adult world. Cousin Angélica, though more stylistically unconventional, is a rather ordinary story about an adult attempting to refine and correct the memories of childhood. Cria! is an almost entirely successful work, while the other, earlier film must be regarded as an honorable failure….

[Cria!] is at its best exploring the confusions that attend the preadolescent years. At that stage, kids have a way of being half-right about how the world works and a sunny, misplaced confidence that they have the whole thing taped. Naturally, they get tripped up...