Torrent, Ana

(1966- )

   Ana Torrent will always be remembered as the watchful, lonely child at the center of Víctor Erice's El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973) and, later, in Carlos Saura's Cría Cuervos (Raise Ravens, 1976). Both films are constructed around her searching, uncomprehending gaze, as she replaces a reality that does not make sense with dark imaginings (of finding Frankenstein's monster, of killing her father and her aunt). She was also in Saura's Elisa, vida mía (Elisa, Life of My Life, 1977) and grew up on screen as the teenage object of desire of a mature man in the Academy Award-nominated El nido (The Nest, Jaime de Armiñán, 1980). This role earned her international attention (and an award at the Montreal Film Festival), but was the last for a decade. She went to New York and trained seriously as an actress before returning to Spanish cinema.

   Torrent's quiet, unemotional presence was put to effective use in Vacas (Cows, Julio Medem, 1991), in which she plays the adulterous wife who ends up leaving for America, and, especially, in Alejandro Amenábar's Tesis (Dissertation, 1996). Her part in this film, as an undergraduate who, in the course of work for her dissertation, becomes fascinated by snuff movies, brought intriguing echoes of her early career (as if the attentive girl had grown into a voyeur) and put to good use her empty expression. From the mid-1990s, she has been a recurring supporting presence in a series of films and television series, including a strong leading role in Yoyes (Helena Taberna, 2000), based on the real life-story of a terrorist, and substantial appearances in Sagitario (Sagitarius, Vicente Molina-Foix, 2001), The Other Boleyn Girl (Justin Chadwick, 2008), and 14 Fabian Road (Jaime de Armiñán, 2008).

   Historical Dictionary of Spanish Cinema by Alberto Mira