Antonieta

While watching this, I kept wondering why it was so utterly mediocre, and what the hell was Saura doing? The answer appears to be "sleepwalking"--he was brought in after it lost the original director, and he was either prevented from improving things or simply wasn't interested (I suspect the former, but who knows...). It's formulaic and dull, and does little more than pass the time. It does continue Saura's tradition of killing--or at least maiming--women in his flicks with political themes.

My first dud by Saura. It wasn't his project, he basically did it as a director-for-hire, and there's little to no passion in it. Very uneventful and dull, a lot of political information but not much insight into Antonieta's interior life. We get a sense of why she's important, but not why she's a character worth spending time with. The few interesting moments (particularly when Schygulla "meets" Adjani) are overwhelmed by dry biographical data, with Adjani sleepwalking through the rol