Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas - Volume 21, Issue 1, 2024

In this article, I analyse the representation of Michela, the trans*/travesti street sex worker character, in the Brazilian short college film O amor que não ousa dizer seu nome/Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name by director Bárbara Roma Fadil (2013). I examine the femininities of the two main characters as well as the sex scene between them and how their relationship evolves afterwards. I draw from trans theory, Black feminism and Jasbir Puar’s concept of assemblage in order to study the complexity of Michela’s portrayal. I argue that the short film depicts Michela’s femininity and sexuality in a complex way, thus enriching the scope of trans*/travesti representation in Brazilian cinema.

Two iconic slow cinema works, Dead Slow Ahead (DSA) (Herce 2015) and Jauja (Alonso 2014), share a contemplative style and a recourse to science fiction, concealed beneath other genres (documentary, western, historical drama). Whereas both films are counter-futurist and foretell the triumph of capital and the demise of our species, they operate differently: DSA is a critique of the acceleration of capitalist exploitation and the diminishment of human life aboard slow-moving cargo vessels; it concludes with hope for humanity, based on our shared solidarity. Jauja, ostensibly a critique of colonialism, examines astronoetic and existential questions about humanity’s place within space and time. In both films, juxtaposing slow cinema techniques (long takes, long shots, minimalist narrative) with dystopian sci-fi elements unleashes an uncanny atmosphere that lays bare the unfathomable aloneness of the human experience in the cosmic expanse.

The 2008 global crisis has produced a large corpus of Spanish films dealing with the social cost of such a financial and institutional meltdown. From social dramas to action thrillers, the causes and the aftermath of that crisis have been not only depicted or explored but also affectively mediated through fiction films in Spanish cinema through a variety of styles and genres. Taking four of those productions as case studies, this article focuses on the ethics and aesthetics involved in using both cinematic realism and genre filmmaking in crisis representation. Hermosa juventud/Beautiful Youth (Rosales 2014) and Juan Techo y Comida/Food and Shelter (del Castillo 2015) portray the precarious lives of working-class protagonists through a restrained visual language grounded in social observation. By contrast, Murieron por encima de sus posibilidades/Dying Beyond Their Means (Lacuesta 2014) and El desconocido/Retribution (de al Torre 2015) adopt the tropes of commercial cinema, mobilizing stylization and global genre codes to dramatize the effects of economic collapse. This article ultimately investigates the type of cinematic visuality that the crisis, in more than one sense, generates in and through the film medium.

La isla mínima/Marshland (Rodríguez 2014) stands as the most successful feature by acclaimed Sevillian director Alberto Rodríguez to date. Rodríguez and other directors of his generation have been considered responsible for the resurgence in popularity of Spanish cinema at the box office in recent years, which to a large extent derives from their transnational artistic influences. Undeniably, the Hollywood film tradition has inspired much of their work, whether in terms of their ‘glocal’ use of popular genres, such as the thriller, or their characteristic cinematic style. In La isla mínima, the Hollywood influence is manifest but the reason for its national and transnational success should also be located elsewhere. Apart from its indigenized use of genre, what seems to have made La isla mínima particularly interesting to a broad spectrum of the audience is its remarkable use of the local landscape, which also situates the film in classic art-house territory. This article will therefore consider Rodríguez’s symbolic use of rural space in a narrative in which international art-house cinema conventions and Hollywood’s global generic influence intermingle with local geographical, historical and social elements in order to produce a story with a broad national and transnational appeal. While the film’s investment in the national is evident, this feminist reading of the film will also contend that La isla mínima’s take on such issues as misogyny and femicide contributed significantly to its transnational legibility.

This article intends to expand the hermeneutical possibilities in the queer study of the monstrous by taking as reference Spanish fantaterror (fantasy and horror) films. In opposition to approaches anchored by the critical study of archetypes and abject bodies, we offer a model of analysis based on Queer Phenomenology, by Sara Ahmed, with the aim of applying it to the study of the cinematic mise en scène. To do that, we centre on some key productions of one of the most successful subgenres of late-Francoist commercial cinema, using its peak period (1969–74) as framework and putting our focus on the queer construction of space, beyond the representational dimension of the monster and its binary alterities. We analyse the role of deviation and disorientation in the construction of queer spatiality that simultaneously diagnoses a state of transition at the heart of the industry and the Francoist political regime during the last years of the dictatorship.

Review of: The Process Genre: Cinema and the Aesthetic of Labor, Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky (2020)

Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 336 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-47800-644-2, h/bk, USD 107.95

ISBN 978-1-47800-644-2, p/bk, USD 29.95

ISBN 978-1-47800-707-4, e-book, USD 29.95

Review of: (Un)Veiling Bodies: A Trajectory of Chilean Postdictatorship Documentary, Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto (2019)

Oxford: Legenda, 219 + xiv pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78188-701-1, h/bk, GBP 80.00

ISBN 978-1-78188-429-4, p/bk, GBP 10.99