| “ | He dies. | „ |
| ~ (Ana, when she decides to kill aunt Paulina) |
Ana is the anti-heroine and main protagonist of the 1974 Spanish dramatic film Cria Cuervos (Raise Ravens in English). She is played by the Spanish actress Ana Torrent (at the time still a child and in her second role in a feature film) at the age of eight, and by Geraldine Chaplin in adulthood.
Personality[]
Ana is a very stoic and calm character. Very close to the mother, on the other hand, she develops a fierce hatred towards her father, who she believes guilty (not entirely wrong) of having caused the death of her mother, due to her underestimating her serious health problems and having sought company of other women after his death. This mourning leads the girl to relive her past several times through mental flashbacks and to develop a cold and cynical character, which leads to murderous behaviors: she tries to poison her father by dissolving in a glass of milk a powder that she believes to be poison, but which it's actually just baking soda. Reacts with total detachment to the death of her father (who has had a heart attack, but for which she is responsible). Impatient with the severity of her aunt Paulina, Ana tries to poison her too, and also proposes to her paralyzed grandmother to die to ease her suffering. Surely the suffering for the death of the mother ends up undermining her mental health since, in addition to the desire to kill, Ana also begins to fantasize about having her mother back with her. Thanks to his stoic character, he is perfectly capable of hiding these feelings behind a calm and normal appearance. Despite having a good relationship with the sisters, the only person with whom Ana opens up seriously is the housekeeper Rosa, who raised her from an early age and with whom she has confidence on the edge of the cheeky (in a scene, in which the woman explains that her mother was unable to breastfeed her for her health problems, Ana asks her to uncover her breast to show him).
Ana particularly loves the song Porque te vas, by the English singer Jeanette, because in her sad words, she sees a lot of herself.
In addition, Ana also seems to be quite vain, in some scenes she is seen putting on her makeup, fixing her hair and expressing interest in beautiful clothes.
History[]
Ana's story in the film is a continuous alternation of flashbacks and real images produced by her imagination, and which she tells the public once she becomes an adult: at the age of eight, during the Franco period, the girl surprised a father's lover - an army officer - came out of his bedroom after hearing his father declare his love to the woman. After the woman left the house, Ana saw her father dead in bed, presumably from a heart attack. Because he believed the father to be guilty of the death of his mother, terminally ill with cancer - a theory supported by the fact that the father had always underestimated his mother's health problems and had often treated her harshly, refusing his desperate requests for help and accusing her of magnifying small problems - Ana had developed a strong hatred for her father, which is why she had attempted to poison him by dissolving in a glass of milk a powder that believed to be a powerful poison but that in reality was nothing more than simple baking soda. Convinced that she had killed her father, the girl had removed the glass of milk from her bedside table with the utmost carelessness. Since, after her mother's death, Ana had begun to fantasize that she would still have her back that evening, Ana saw her mother scold her for getting out of bed and ordering her to go back to sleep.
At her father's funeral vigil, Ana saw again the mysterious woman who escaped from her father's bedroom on the night of his death. La donna, Amelia, is the wife of her father's close friend and fellow military officer.
Ana's satisfaction at getting rid of her father's presence was short-lived, as her mother's sister, her aunt Paulina, arrived early to fix the house and take care of her and her sisters Irene and Maite. The family, now made up of women only, also included Ana's grandmother, silent and awaiting death in a wheelchair, and the exuberant housekeeper Rosa. Ana's favorite place, the one where she loved to take refuge when she wanted to be alone, was the basement, where she kept the baking soda.
The small rituals of daily life filled Ana's days during her summer school holidays. Tortured by memories of her mother's illness, Ana began to rebel against her aunt's authoritarian style, and in attacks of loneliness she imagined in various ways the continuous presence of her mother, or even imagined to commit suicide. Despite the presence of her two sisters, Ana's only truly close companions were Rosa and her pet Guinea pig, Roni, who however died in her cage one morning.
The painful death of Ana's mother from cancer, the alleged murder of her father, the death of her guinea pig and her imaginary suicide began to weigh on the girl's mind. Ana even went so far as to offer her grandmother the chance to die and free herself from loneliness by providing her with a spoonful of poison. The old woman, however, realized that what her granddaughter believed was poison was nothing more than harmless baking soda, and therefore refused Ana's offer.
Later Ana, on the eve of the first day of school after the summer holidays, attempted to poison Aunt Paulina with the same powder, mixing a spoonful in a glass of milk as she had done with her father but of course, the next morning the woman was still alive. So, after a summer of almost total isolation from the rest of the world, Ana and her two sisters left their suffocating family complex for the first time. Just before leaving home, during breakfast, Irene told Ana about a dream she had had the previous night, in which she was put on the stake.