[Ana] Torrent guilelessly captures the terror and wonder of imagination's possibility that so informs childhood experience.

Spirit of the Beehive is the sort of slumbrously sensitive item that tends to give art films a poisonous reputation... seems to believe in the infinite evocative power of long, ponderous, static takes.

Sensitive, beautifully-wrought.

Erice attempts to weave a coming-of-age drama with regionalist atmospheres and a decent performance from Ana Torrent, but his aesthetic priorities slowly weaken his reductionist allegory about collective trauma under Franco. [Full review in Spanish]