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Sonámbulos (1978) or Somnambulists or Sleepwalkers deals with Ana (Ana Belen) works side by side with her mother María Rosa (Maria Rosa Salgado) in the fight to save anti-Franco militants from the death penalty during the time of the Burgos Process . Ana's mother is a former actress and Ana, her mother and a few other actors are preparing a protest in the theater where an international festival on Strinberg is being held . But in Ana's life there are more things. With her mother lives her uncle, her father's brother, Norman (Norman Brisky) , an old doctor with devious methods , as he has a rare remedy to heal her that it can also have consequences : it produces such a dis-inhibition that the patient lies beyond good and evil, ethics and convictions.Helped by Fatima (Lola Gaos) , a former nurse who loved his father, and nowadays the home servant , the doctor will also try to experiment with Ana's ideas and feelings.

Second installment of a trilogy that completes¨Camada negra¨or "Black litter" and ¨El corazón del bosque¨or "The heart of the forest" , with which its director became the most renowned filmmaker of his generation . The film skillfully mixes the experimental with the political , in a highly complex narrative structure, a direct heir to that of children's stories. The film won the Best Director award at the San Sebastian Festival in 1978 .

Director Gutierrez Aragón told the following ones : ¨There are two starting points . One is historical : in the 1970s an event occurred that made a great impression on me. In a Madrid theater -María Guerrero-, during the Burgos trial, a group of actors made a protest during the performance of a Strindberg play ; the plays of this author are terribly destructive , and while a concrete destruction was being protested from the stage occupied by actors : the lives of some people who were being judged militarily in Burgos for obscure political reasons . This suggested to me that the show was in a box rather than on stage, that's where Sonámbulos started . It was born from that image of the theater but also from something that has always disturbed me a lot and that is that with certain things or performances one can agree ideologically and yet you can have personal oppositions that come into tension with collective options . To explain myself and explain the film: the characters of Ana Belén and Rosa Salgado agree to save the lives of other people , in the military in the same political party ; this provides them with a similar ideological umbrella, but vitally nonetheless, they are at odds, if you like because they are mother and daughter, even if they love each other . Sleepwalkers or Sonámbulos ideas were built on these columns . A purely intellectual speculation and another almost historical. Being a very difficult film , from the expressive point of view, I wanted it to be a narrative film despite these difficulties ; that is to say, that it was a film that could be said not only to be seen as a painting or as a succession of more or less disjointed images , but to be a hard narrative . Giving a very brief interpretation of the film, avoiding explanations, I would say that for us -my generation- the Franco regime was a very long nightmare, where we did the things of nightmares. And in this sense they were somewhat unreal actions since they responded to that nightmare. Just as darkness does not exist, which is "the lack of light" -if the Augustinian quote allows me-, or that evil does not exist because only a lack of good can be defined, so the things that we did under Franco were unreal because they responded to that evil that was Franco's dictatorship ¨.

Regarding the title of Sonámbulos or Sleepwalkers , perhaps the Franco years were a long nightmare in which we acted as one acts in dreams. You know that everything is true - the cruelty, the fear, the humiliation - but you also know that everything is a lie because it is a false reality. And everything you do, even revolutionary or clandestine, heroic or resistant, is, for the same reason, also a lie, or at least a false reality, because it is part of the same nightmare . A nightmare where waking up means death . The cast is pretty good . Ana Belén gives a passable acting as the young woman who works on the Committee for the release of some suspected terrorists sentenced to death, suffering a faint , while Norman Brisky with a strong Argentinean accent plays decently her uncle Norman, a former doctor who was withdrawn from the drug smuggling license, offering her a remedy that could cure her brain disease. They are well accompanied with a great support cast with plenty of notorious Spanish secondaries , such as : María Rosa Salgado , José Luis Gómez , Francisco Algora , Lola Gaos , José Manuel Cervino , Laly Soldevila, Enriqueta Carballeira, Eduardo MacGregor , Julio Peña, Félix Rotaeta and filmmakers : Ricardo Franco, José Luis Borau.

The picture was regular and strangely directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón (Torrelavega, Cantabria 2 January 1940) . Manuel is a Spanish screenwriter and film director. His 1973 film ¨Habla, mudita¨ was entered into the 23rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 1977, he won the Silver Bear for Best Director for Camada negra at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival . His 1979 film ¨El corazón del bosque¨ was entered into the 29th Berlin International Film Festival. Two years later, his film ¨Maravillas¨ was entered into the 31st Berlin International Film Festival.His 1982 film ¨Demons in the Garden¨ was entered into the 13th Moscow International Film Festival where it won the FIPRESCI Prize. In 1991 he was a member of the jury at the 17th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1995 his film ¨El rey del rio¨or King of the River was entered into the 45th Berlin International Film Festival . Gutiérrez Aragón was elected to Seat F of the Real Academia Española on 16 April 2015, he took up his seat on 24 January 2016

Political militancy disguised as fairy tales in a film full of symbols and allegories.

With the 70s came openness and intellectual aspirations to Spanish cinema. Directors were now committed left-wing authors and, mainly under the production of Elías Querejeta, and with the direction of Erice or Saura, some of the great masterpieces of Spanish cinema emerged.

But in a world of intellectual pretensions, obsessed with new European currents, much of that cinema is of a pedantry and stupidity that causes blushing and stupor.

At the head of this delirious current we can put this Sleepwalkers by Gutiérrez Aragón.

Ana Belén participated in many of these messes. Her acting abilities are not exceptional, her declamatory voice has a theatrical whiff, but her presence is interesting.

The film has an interesting beginning: left-wing groups demonstrate in front of the security forces resisting the last blows of the dictatorship, and a young woman who works at the National Library begins to suffer headaches.

The headaches are the beginning of a serious neuronal disease and her uncle, a doctor incapacitated by the regime who is now dedicated to staging Strindberg (in English!), and who we are not sure why he lives with Ana's mother, makes a kind of Mephistophelian proposition to the young woman. Ana and her son go to live with her mother and uncle.

Everything begins to become very allegorical and symbolic: the death sentence of the protagonist is identified with the death sentences of the dictatorship, and even eating a plate of lentils seems to mean something else.

Gutiérrez Aragón obviously likes fantasy and theater. There is a book that seems to reproduce personal and political history in a fairy tale style. There is a key that opens the drawer of surprises, and a moon cabinet where the queen and the wizard keep their artifacts. But all this with a more picturesque than functional character.

A maid appears, played by Lola Gaos, who we are told was a sinister former lover of Ana's father, and the characters suddenly begin to drop phrases from Strindberg's Ghost Sonata in home conversations. Now Strindberg's somnambulant drama seems to serve as a reflection of Ana's family.

The dialogues are increasingly absurd and pompous. The book that seems to hold the key to Ana's survival disappears. And since the cinema of the time had to be daring and show adult content, these films abound in deliriously scandalous situations: here, of course, Ana has been repressing her sexual desire for many years, and in a scene that is hilariously absurd and disgusting at the same time, the guy and the maid decide to return her sexual desire.

In other disastrous scenes, Ana suffers persecution and mistreatment by the military apparatus and officials of the dictatorship, who are also searching for the book and the key.

The most interesting moments take place during Miguel Narros' performance of Strindberg.

Sleepwalkers was filmed after the death of the dictator in a difficult time of searching for a social pact, a transition to a stable democracy, resignations and concessions everywhere. Clearly there are intellectuals who did not agree.

The director, however, was more virulent and less cryptic in his attacks on the extreme right in his previous film Black Lime.

a now major spanish director was starting. franco's dictatorship was still close and symbols still played their role in the spanish films. despite of a weird and not well link paly, the atmosphere created by the excellent photography and sound takes some scenes of this film to the heaven of souvenirs at the brain, still shocking the senses