[For a decade I have been looking at Saura films] and have found less and less to write about them. Some—Garden of Delights, The Hunt—are more ambitious than others, but all seem more intricate, more convoluted, and more fragmented than they have to be. Many of Saura's films … I have found particularly problematical because of their incessant juggling of fantasy and reality. From time to time I have been made aware that Saura is exploring the Spanish soul through the Franco years and beyond, but the director's symbolism tends to be guarded, mysterious, cabalistic, as if he dare not be too explicit. Similarly, his probes into repressed, twisted, often downright demented sexuality tend to be expressed with much too much facile trickery. In all these years I have come to respect Saura's intentions without enjoying his effects, or even being especially edified by them. He seems...