This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The Spanish film La Promesa (2004) was co-written and directed by Héctor Carré. The movie stars the great Spanish actor Carmen Maura as Celia, an abused wife who leaves her home to find a new life. She comes to a small seaside town, where she saves the life of a young boy, Daniel, played by Santiago Barón. The boy's mother, Dorita (the lovely Ana Fernández), hires Celia to be housemaid and nanny. Dorita's handsome husband, Roberto (Juan Margallo) senses that something isn't quite right about Celia, but accepts her as an employee anyway.From that point things begin to go wrong. We learn that Dorita feels abandoned by Roberto, who ignores her in favor of his law practice. (She is not a showpiece wife, because their elegant house was a gift from her father. Apparently the money comes from Dorita's side of the family. In essence, Roberto is a showpiece husband.)Daniel loves Celia, but he can be difficult and oppositional. We learn that Celia is fanatically religious, and she is horrified when a crucifix in a church crumbles before her eyes. (The priest tells her it was just worm-eaten wood, but Celia isn't convinced.)What follows is basically a horror film. However, there are no crazed stalkers or slashers anywhere. There is horror, but it's internal. The atmosphere in the movie is consistently grim and laden with foreboding. You know something bad is going to happen, but you don't know what. You'll have to see the film to know how the movie ends. Actually, the plot really ends about five minutes before the movie ends. The last five minutes of the film is an upbeat fantasy, probably tacked on to keep the producers happy. Still, the movie is worth seeing if you don't mind depressing films. We saw La Promesa on DVD, and it worked well on the small screen. Carmen Maura is one of the great actors of our time. Even if this type of movie isn't really your normal fare, I recommend seeing it just to watch a truly gifted professional at work.

The amazing Carmen Maura plays a deeply religious maruja who gets fed up with her abusive husband and skips town after witnessing a bizarre random accident. Fate leads her to a small town and a position as a nanny for a dysfunctional couple and their strange little boy. Everything is perfect in her new life until she starts having disagreements with the patriarch and she starts to realize that there is something wrong in the house. Or perhaps she is descending into madness, set off by the clashing of her devout Catholicism and newfound liberation? This film is beautifully photographed and features lovely Spanish Gothic architecture. It never goes into full on horror like it seems to want so badly to do, but it's still a compelling film that is effective on several levels.

La Promesa is the story of a woman who starts a new life as a nanny in a rich Galician household. The story is presented with what i consider to be a prefix, an introduction to the story which gives reference yet is independent to the whole. It defines the Celia (Gregoria is her real name) character as an abused housewife who leaving behind her tyrannical husband heads on a pilgrimage to a Church in Galicia. Upon arriving she has a chance encounter with a child who has run away from his mother and whom she saves by chance. She is promptly offered a position as nanny of the boy, with minor resistance from the father. It is his growing opposition to maternal rule which turns the woman and child docile and which Celia believing she is their only defender. This the context within which the story takes place. It is a Psychoanalitical thriller about the friction of the clashing dualities of liberation and the maternal instinct within a woman's psyche. The film is fairly loyal to POV, although it allows us to see the seams of Celia/Gregoria's reality. While it isn't the best example of photographic excellence and some post-production glossiness is less than fitting, the aesthetic aspect of the film is at the very least appropriate, leaving the plot alone in driving the viewer's interest. It is another excellent Spannish Thriller about a woman with a very intense reversion of the Oedipus Complex. This is catholicism and psychoanalysis to a very detailed extent, which is made believable by Maura's excellent portrayal but which also asks quite a bit of collaboration from the viewer in terms of adapting to the films own rules' of reality. I thought it excellent, but i do wonder if the film's more visual aspects are sufficient hint for somebody who is not willing to follow the very Spanish intellectual/religious premise.

"La Promesa" is one of the best Spanish movies of 2004. The story begins with Gregoria (the always fabulous Carmen Maura) as an unhappy housewife in Madrid whose husband is emotionally and, at times, physically abusive. She is devoutly religious, however, and doesn't want to leave him until she realizes that he has broken his promise to love her. She leaves (I won't say how as not to spoil the movie) and goes to Galicia in the north of Spain where she finds a rich family in need of a nanny for their son. She changes her name to Celia (the name she always wanted to be called) and her religious devotion begins to verge on insanity and soon everyone around her becomes a part of the intense psychosis waging war in her mind. The acting is fabulous as Carmen Maura once again delivers a stunning performance and definitely shows why she's the Spanish actress who has won the most awards. The film is entirely believable and leaves you feeling unnerved, but more than a little empowered in a strange, haunting kind of way.