BwlBoy,
I also prefer ¨The Spirit of the Beehive¨ to ¨Cría Cuervos,¨even though I haven´t seen the latter for many years -- it doesn´t show on TCM, I have requested it but without any success, perhaps if other people join efforts, they will. ¨The Spirit of the Beehive¨ only started to show on TCM in September 2006, after I requested it, and since then it has shown about three times --it will show again this coming September 2008.
As for the performance of child actress Ana Torrent in ¨The Spirit of the Beehive,¨ I am with you, it is really incredible. She lives her part in flesh and soul in a very mature way. Sometimes I think the director tricked her into thinking what was happening was real. It is difficult otherwise to think that any child would act so realistically the way she does.
As for Ana Torrent not having achieved international stardom, it seems to be a true statement. In Spain she is very well-known but elsewhere she seems to be known only by a selected group of film connoisseurs. Having said this, she is indeed a very well accredited actress. She has won a total of 7 awards, 6 of which have been International, and 3 nominations, 1 of which has also been international. I am sure that she would become more internationally recognized if her films reached Hollywood, however, she doesn´t seem to care to market herself that high. She seems to be happy without Hollywood, for which I don´t blame her.
If you look at the awards section in Ana Torrent´s IMDb page, you see the list of International awards and the Spanish awards she has won to the present time. She is 42 years old now (she was born in 1966): http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0868479/awards.
She won a best actress GRAMADO Latin/Brazilian award and a ACE award or ¨premio¨ (the later is given in the US for hispanic achievements in the fields of film, television and theatre) for ¨The Spirit of the Beehive¨ in 1973 and for ¨Thesis¨ in 1996. She also won an ACE award and a ¨Montréal World Film Festival¨ award for ¨El Nido¨ in 1980. In 2000 she also won a best actress French award for the film YOYES in a festival that takes place in Toulousse, Frances since 1998, which focuses on Spanish films (she won a ¨Toulouse Cinespaña¨ award). For ¨Thesis¨ she also won two Spanish award nominations: FOTOGRAMA and GOYA. ¨Thesis¨ was directed by Alejandro Amenábar who also directed ¨The Others,¨ in which Nicole Kidman starred. The last award she won was in 2004 for ¨Iris,¨ ¨a Barcelona Film Award¨ that honors achievements in Catalonian cinema.
There is no question that Ana Torrent is a well accomplished actress.
I also loved ¨Por qué te vas¨ from ¨Cría Cuervos¨ soundtrack -- it is addictive. Every time the film comes to my mind, I have to listen to the song.
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