Spanish Cinema: Calling the Shots

Spanish Cinema: Calling the Shots. Ed. by ROB RIX and ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ-SAONA. (Leeds Iberian Papers). Leeds: Trinity and All Saints. 1999. x 153 pp. 15 [pounds sterling].

This volume gathers very different readings of contemporary Spanish films by Anne White, Maria Jose Gamez Fuentes, Mark Allinson, Santiago Fouz-Hernandez, Paul Julian Smith, Carmen Rabalska, Rob Rix, John Hopewell, and a reflection on production and finance by Cecilie Brown. In spite of the diverse subjects and approaches, most contributors agree that contemporary Spanish cinema has obviously departed from the more or less cryptic criticism of the dictatorial regime to venture into post-modern aesthetics and social mores.

In a highly original essay, White observes in Vacas, by Julio Medem, the equation between artistic creation and paternal procreation, and concludes that the former is paramount in Medem's philosophy of life and of history. This is a refreshing departure from regional concerns which I believe promotes Medem's reception in less constrained circles. Gamez Fuentes sees in Nadie hablara de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto (A. Diaz Yanes) a reinscription of the maternal in which the mother serves as link between the oppressive dictatorial past and a no less oppressive contemporary sexism. In comparison to films like Furtivos (Jose Luis Borau, 1975) or La mitad del cielo (Manuel Gutierrez Aragon, 1986), the author finds the mother in Nadie less of a mythical figure than a manifestation of motherhood closer to reality.

Allinson is interested in the different results of adaptation in Pilar Miro's last two films, El perro del hortelano (based on the play by Lope de Vega) and Tu nombre envenena mis suenos (based on Joaquin Leguina's novel). In a contrastive account, he finds in El perro a successful mise en scene of the poetics of glamour that resides in the combination of comedy and fantasy already present in Lope's play. He criticizes Tu nombre, on the other hand, as a failed hybrid of history, politics and film noir attributable to the difficulties of translating Leguina's novel into film. Fouz-Hernandez approaches Bigas Luna's Huevos de oro reading Javier Bardem's body in this film and in his public persona as 'a key signifier of cultural beliefs' (p. 47). In spite of the macho looks and spirit they project, both Bardem's image and that of his character in the film are perishable glitter. To reach this conclusion, Fouz-Hernandez reads Bigas Luna's film as de(con)struction of its main male protagonist.

Smith, following the cultural theories of Michel de Certeau, examines a film concerned with the situation of gypsies in Spain (Alma gitana by Chus Gutierrez) and both the public image and some artistic work of the dancer Joaquin Cortes. While it would be impossibly ambitious to examine the dialectic of gypsies and payos in a short essay, Smith nevertheless raises profound philosophical and moral issues related not only to ethnic diversity in contemporary Spain but also to any multicultural society. He particularly acknowledges the unresolved paradox that characterizes multicultural coexistence: 'respect for other cultures involves the recognition that those cultures may reject the progressive values on which multiculturalism is based' (p. 84). Rabalska, while considering recent tendencies in Spanish cinema, particularly the films of Amenabar, Alex de La Iglesia, and Santiago Segura among others, points to the work of Berlanga, Ferreri and Bunuel as their predecessors. She concentrates, though, on Spanish blockbusters which exploit lo cutre (the sleazy), and tries to explain their popularity in terms of postmodern ambiguity-cum-nostalgia. Once Rabalska has examined numerous instances of gratuituous violence and bad taste, she poses a question that would have been more productively placed at the beginning of her essay: 'Is indulgence in bad taste to be interpreted as an implicit support of mysoginistic representations?' (p. 110). Maybe not, but it still is both indulgence and bad taste.

In the remaining essays, Rix examines the interest displayed by the Spanish film industry in markets, production and artistic collaboration in several Latin American countries that, in his opinion, is only hindered by the pervasive control exercised by Hollywood on audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Hopewell reviews the careers of new directors of shorts, viewing their experimental work as the product of an international education and a set of interests different from the historical and social commitment of previous film-makers. Finally, Brown explains the distance that a ge industry has to go in order to become a fully developed feature film industry.