Revisiting the comedia sexy ibrica: No desears al vecino del quinto (Ramn Fernndez, 1971)

What is usually regarded as the reactionary, pro-regime popular cinema of the 1960s and early 1970s has done well recently on Spanish public television. Ratings and nostalgia levels have been high for a series of old Francoist commercial films which sought to wrestle with Spain's problematic adaptation to consumer capitalism and modern attitudes towards sex and sexual identities. In general, however, academic criticism has tended to avoid or ignore this kind of material, preferring to focus instead on the more serious, socially-engaged cinema of the nuevo cine espaol. In this paper, I wish to reconsider the field of Spain's commercial cinema of the period and within it the sleazy comedia ertica or comedia sexy ibrica, before offering a short case study of No desears al vecino del quinto. The latter will deal briefly with narrative structure and closure as well as the comic interplay between gay and straight identities.