Oscuros sueños de agosto

This is a rather depressing story about a woman who suffers depression and returns to Spain from Venezuela, where she has been living with her wealthy lover. This woman, well played by a dubbed Viveca Lindfors, seeks treatment in an asylum which appears to be located near Madrid. Although they hadn't meet since she was a 4 years old child, her daughter (a dull Sonia Bruno) is not resentful, and joins the mother in the asylum, where the patient will undergo a psychodrama treatment. The plot revolves around both women's difficult relationships with their respective lovers, and the rich patients who surround the middle-aged (Viveca and Francisco Rabal) and young (Sonia Bruno and Julian Mateos) couples. Some other small characters which are quite interesting are patients such as a highly neurotic blonde bombshell actress (played by lovely Gisia Paradis), a bipolar and gossipy woman (Laly Soldevilla)...both providing a few very welcome camp humour relax moments to an otherwise very gloomy story. I liked the psychodrama session scene with Viveka and Rabal reenacting the scene that triggered her depression, and I think that the film was well handled, had good production values, good development of characters. Maybe the young couple lacked charisma, and some scenes were a little bit slow-paced. Francisco Rabal played his usual strong male-voiced masculine self, and if effective, I don't find him interesting. Viveca Lindfors was very compelling, and with her use of body and facial expressions managed to bring to life her not very appealing part of a depressed bourgeois housewife. Julian Mateos had a nice body at the time, and was OK as the tortured alcoholic and violent patient who seduces the visiting sweet Sonia Braga. Overall, a curious example of the Spanish attempt at a sort of new wave in the 1960's by the prestigious Miguel Picazo (La Tia Tula, 1964), and mainly recommended to Miss Lindfors' fans.