Saura is one of those tightly controlled, long-distance filmmakers … who, rather than exploding into Felliniesque self-apotheosis, tends to implode within personal themes and a signatory style. Saura's Garden of Delights and Cousin Angelica … seethed in their contemporary portraits of familial disintegration and bitter memories of past repressions.

A funny thing, however, has happened to Saura on the way to the '80s. The director's latest films reveal a desperate, unconscious need for Franco and the good old bad days of repression that had added an urgency and subtextual sting to his films. Without a relevant nemesis, Mama Turns 100 emerges as a lightweight parody of Garden of Delights (and, by implication, of Saura himself) and Blindfolded [Los ojos vendados] evolves as a stylish romance that fails in its secondary purpose as a political thesis because it lacks a credible right-wing villain. In Saura's new films, the Spain of a...