La Caza

La Caza manages, with very little reading between the lines, a remarkably overt condemnation of Spain's presiding spirit. Three middle-aged men and a youth embark on a day's rabbit hunting. They take with them the trappings of material success, and their prattle places them alongside the status quo. Petty vanities and jealousies lie close to the surface, but it is a deeper-felt, more inarticulate sense of guilt that grows to dominate. Where they hunt had been a battleground during the war (and still contains its rotting corpses), half the rabbits they kill are diseased. And as the sun gets hotter, the stare of the camera becomes more relentless, burning into the flesh of ageing men who twitch and grunt in their sleep. Feverish sexuality (linked by implication to repressive politics), outbursts of violence and a sense of foreboding all contribute to the group's self-destruction. Although over-emphatic in its editing, seldom has a film been informed with such crystal hatred for its characters.