Flamenco dancer Antonio Gades (star of Saura's Carmen and Blood Wedding) gives one of his first and finest performances in this tense thriller about a gypsy fugitive making his way across rural Spain. Pursued by the police for the murder of a Civil Guard, Sebas (Gades) seeks refuge wherever he can find it: from his drunken girlfriend to a suspicious uncle until finally, fatally, in the home of his mother. Like Saura's The Hooligans (see July 2) and other Spanish films of the era, With the East Wind presents a social outsider as a kind of unwitting rebel against the norms of a repressive society, but Mario Camus' depiction of the world of the quinquis-a kind of delinquent living on the margins of Spanish society-has an even more immediate political impact; Sebas' flight seems less the consequence of a particular crime than a way of life. With the East Wind also featured the return to the screen of Imperio Argentino, the greatest Spanish star of the thirties, in the pivotal role of Sebas' mother. Richard Peña