Libertarias

Aranda's big number on the Spanish Civil War deserves praise for its feminist perspective on the course of the 1936-7 revolution, when women's liberation was a logical, if hardly well-recognised, constituent of the libertarian ideals that the Spanish working class rose up to assert. Seen through the eyes of Maria (Gil), an initially fragile nun driven into a female militia by the revolution in Barcelona, it also takes a thoroughly circumscribed stance on the role of religion in this history. The film crams and elides both events and characters, and, after a brave start, loses its direction and our involvement - particularly problematic is a sudden final outburst of brutal violence.