Saturday 20 July 2013

Resources Revisited: Where to buy / watch / read Spanish cinema


Way back when this blog began in February 2011, I wrote a resources post detailing where to find films, DVDs, books, journals related to Spanish cinema. I've updated that post multiple times since then but thought that the time had come to write a separate, updated version because (a) the original post has so many revisions that it's starting to look like a patchwork quilt, and (b) so much has changed online in the past two years, it seems simpler to start over. So, some of the information in this post is the same as the original (where things haven't changed), but I've tried to make sure that all of it is up to date.

Films and DVDs –
      The UK distribution of Spanish films on DVD has improved in the last few years, and there are a number of options in terms of buying them within the UK. Moviemail has good offers / sales on foreign language cinema and I like supporting an independent retailer when I can - they also have free postage within the UK. Prices on Amazon UK vary and they've changed how you can go about finding Spanish language films as they no longer bother to have a World Cinema genre category. To find them - Music, Games, Films & TV > Film & TV > Look at the sidebar on the left of the screen > Under 'Languages', you will see 'Spanish'. From there you can change the order of the search results by popularity, price, or release date, and you can also see more recent releases by looking at the 'New arrivals' category in the sidebar on the left (you can choose between 'Last 30 days', 'Last 90 days', and 'Next 90 days'). 
       However a lot of Spanish films that don’t get released over here are released in Spain with optional English subtitles (this is more true of contemporary films than older classics, but there is nonetheless a wide range available with subtitle options). If you’re unsure about ordering from Spain, there are quite a lot of Spanish sellers selling Spanish DVDs on ebay UK. It used to be quite straightforward to find Spanish films on ebay (DVDs > Foreign Language > Spanish), but they've dropped 'Foreign Language' from the main genre menu - you can still find them as a category if you click 'More refinements' in the left-hand sidebar (when you've selected the general DVD category) but you have to go through several more menus and it becomes quite convoluted (with only a comparatively small number of DVDs listed under what become sub-genres within sub-genres). What I usually do is search for the title / director / actor in the main search engine, tick the box that says 'include description', and set the 'Item Location' as European Union - you will then start to see Spanish sellers / ebay shops –the prices sometimes seem a little high, but consider that they quite often offer free postage and have factored that into their asking price (standard postage for one DVD being sent from Spain to the UK seems to be around 12€). I have ordered DVDs through ebay in this way and have never had any problem.
       If you’re feeling more adventurous and / or speak Spanish, there are a number of online Spanish DVD stores. Amazon Spain opened in September 2011, and it is as reliable as the UK version but they do seem to have quite low levels of stock -you sometimes have to wait a few weeks for something to come back into stock. The postage is a standard 7€, which is far more reasonable than most of the other sites I have used. Fnac would seem the other obvious place to start, but you need to have a bank card issued in Spain in order to use it. I’m not sure if that is also the case for El Corte Inglés but the last time I attempted to order from them they wanted my passport number, which seemed a bit excessive for the sake of the 1st series of 7 vidas (don’t ask). The site that I used most often before Amazon Spain opened is DVDgo -if you’re not confident in Spanish, click on the Union Jack in the top right-hand corner and the menus switch to English (although you still need to search for titles in Spanish). They have really good reductions when they have a sale, although be warned that the postage costs can be quite expensive. The other DVD site that I’ve used is Stars Cafe (and I've continued to use them in combination with Amazon because they have good sales and their postage rates are more reasonable than DVDgo) and likewise there is another Union Jack on the right-hand side to switch the menus into English. Both stores do deliveries by courier, so once they are despatched they arrive very quickly.
      In terms of films being streamed online, I can vouch for Filmin and Filmotech. Filmin is entirely in Spanish and there are no English subtitle options on the films, so it’s one for people who speak Spanish or who want to improve their Spanish. It mainly streams contemporary Spanish films with an emphasis on the indie / arthouse end of the market. You can watch films on Filmin in the UK, but you will need to find an amenable Spaniard to pay on your behalf (or to buy you a gift subscription). The prices currently break down into two streams: Premium and Premium+. In the Premium strand you can pay 8€/month or 70€/year and that allows you to watch an unlimited number of films from the main catalogue (more than 3700 films and rising). There are certain films (usually ones that are either unreleased in Spanish cinemas or that are shortly about to get a DVD release) that cost more, and that's where Premium+ comes in. In the Premium+ strand you pay 15€/month, 30€ for three months, 55€ for six months, or 110€ for a year - and each of those will also cover three of those more exclusive films per month (but you can't accumulate the tokens - you have three per month, they don't carry over to the next month). You can also buy bundles of these tokens (14€ for 5, 50€ for 20). Filmotech generally has older films than Filmin (although in the past year they have increased their number of contemporary releases), and they’re also restricted depending on where in the world you are (for example, only certain Berlanga films are accessible from the UK). The plus side is that some of them do have English subtitle options and you pay a monthly subscription of 6,95€, with some premium titles available for an extra payment (all payable through paypal).

Books and articles–
      In terms of book recommendations, see my posts - Books on Spanish Cinema, Part One and Part Two - those posts are periodically updated as and when I get my hands on new books (which also receive standalone posts - click on 'Books' in the labels at the bottom of the blog and you will get to all of those posts). 2013 is shaping up to be a bumper year for new books on Spanish cinema - so standby for more! 
      The two online bookshops that I have used in the past are Casa del Libro and Ocho y Medio. Casa del Libro can be switched into English by clicking on the drop down menu next to the Spanish flag at the top of the page and likewise Ocho y Medio also has an English option by clicking on the Union Jack –but if you’re after Spanish-language books, you can probably cope with the websites being in Spanish (note: Ocho y Medio sells French-language books as well). Casa del Libro is similar to Waterstones and Ocho y Medio is a specialist (Cinema) bookshop. The postage is pretty expensive but I’ve never had any problems with my orders, and again delivery is by courier. I have also ordered specific books direct from the publishers as well –some of those are in the links list on the right-hand side. It’s also worth noting that since Amazon Spain started, Amazon UK have more Spanish-language film books listed on their site (and that are included within their Amazon Prime postage package), and more Spanish bookstores seem to be listing Spanish books on the Amazon Marketplace on the UK site. AbeBooks is kind of Marketplace for independent bookstores and offers price comparison and facilitates the orders and payments –there are a lot of Spanish bookstores on there and I've got some good deals from there in the past (including back issues of Spanish magazines).
      In terms of online content, the academic journals listed on the right-hand side usually have at least one (old) back issue that is available for download for free (that is at least true for the Intellect titles), and if you’re at university you may be able to get access to more recent issues through the university library (if they subscribe electronically). In the past year, Archivos de la Filmoteca, a Spanish-language journal, has made all of its back issues viewable online in PDF form, for free - all you have to do is register with their site. The other major resource that is out there is the website Film Studies for Free, which among other wonders has regularly-updated lists of online film and media studies journals, open access film e-books, and links to film and moving image studies PhD theses that are online.

I will continue to add links to the lists on the right-hand side, and if I come across something really interesting I’ll highlight it in a post.

Thursday 20 June 2013

Guest post: Fiona Noble on Cría cuervos / Raise Ravens (Carlos Saura, 1976)

As indicated previously, I've paused my Carlos Saura Challenge for a few weeks while I deal with a situation at work. Fiona Noble kindly offered to write something for Nobody Knows Anybody about Cría cuervos as it is a film that features in her doctoral research. I hope to be back up and running in July, but in the meantime I leave you with Fiona's take on one of Saura's key films.



   Like La prima Angélica (already discussed on this blog), Cría cuervos revolves around the intersection of memory and childhood.  These themes are channelled primarily through the film’s central character, Ana, played by Ana Torrent.  Torrent has been read by Marsha Kinder as emblematic of the generation raised during the dictatorship, the self-proclaimed ‘children of Franco’ (1983: 57).  For Kinder, the figure of the child in films produced by this generation of directors (including, as well as Saura, José Luis Borau, Jaime de Armiñan, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón) symbolises their infantilisation by the Francoist regime.
   Regarding Torrent’s earlier appearance in Víctor Erice’s El espíritu de la colmena (1973), Kinder underscores the fundamental ambivalence of the child: while her ‘luminous dark eyes confront us with a bold knowing gaze, conveying a precocious intelligence, passion and intensity that seem almost ominous’, at the same time ‘her pale oval face and slender birdlike frame create a fragility that also marks her as a victim – a delicate instrument for the registering of pain’ (1983: 59-60).  This ambivalence underscores the dualism of this generation, at once victims, who have suffered at the hands of the regime, as well as potential future aggressors, who have learned from, and are at risk of perpetuating, their traumatic experiences through the repetition of violent acts.
   These concerns surface too in Cría, insofar as protagonist Ana actively seeks to kill her father, and then her aunt by poisoning them.  While the poison is revealed to be a harmless substance (bicarbonate of soda), and thus ‘meaningful action is still only imaginable, not performed’ (Kinder 1983: 66), Ana’s desire to provoke the death of these individuals is anything but imagined.  The figure of the child thus functions as a metaphor for those who have grown up under the Franco regime, replicating their sentiments of frustration and helplessness, but also encapsulating their impulse towards violence.
   That the child is representative of a now adult generation impacts upon Cría’s temporality and chronology.  Produced in 1975, shortly before Franco’s death, the film prophetically and symbolically addresses this event through the death of the father in the opening scenes. Furthermore, the narrative moves between past and present, or rather between present and future.  The action takes place on two distinct temporal planes – the first during protagonist Ana’s childhood in 1975, and the second, twenty years later, in 1995, when an adult Ana attempts to explain her actions in the past.  The child in addition demonstrates the ability to conjure up the image of her dead mother, evidencing a fluid approach to chronology and to history.  This is further underscored by the film’s casting, given that Chaplin plays both the adult Ana and her mother María.  On the one hand, this fluid chronology, that evidences the influence of the past on the present, is tied specifically to the film’s politico-historical context.  Specifically, it highlights the extent to which the country’s forgotten traumatic past was bound to return in the aftermath of the dictator’s death.  On the other, and in more general terms, this evidences the child’s status as, in the words of Judith Halberstam, ‘always already anarchic and rebellious, out of order and out of time’ (2011: 27).
   In spite of this fluid approach to chronology, the film’s spatiality is characterised conversely by claustrophobia and restriction.  The majority of Cría’s narrative unfolds during the girls’ school holidays, creating a stifling atmosphere in which the children have little access to the world outside the walls of their home.  In support of this, the action takes place almost exclusively within the family home.  The only exception to this is the episode in which Aunt Paulina takes the children to their father’s friend’s farm.
   Furthermore, the family home is marked as a site of trauma, given that the film begins with the death of the girls’ father in his own bed.  Having previously lost their mother, Ana and her sisters are now orphans, under the tutelage of their Aunt Paulina, their mother’s sister.  Their mute grandmother, and maid Rosa, also live in the house with the three girls.  The fractured family unit, in conjunction with the claustrophobic family home, symbolise the political and cultural climate in Spain during and after the dictatorship.  Cría’s spatial restraint thus contrasts dramatically with its temporal freedom, underscoring both the limitations and possibilities of the child’s imagination.
   The film ends with the girls’ re-emergence into the outside world, the camera positioned in a high angle shot, tracking the children as they make their way along the bustling streets of Madrid to attend their first day back at school after the holidays.  The camera lingers at the city skyline, leaving the spectator wondering about the fates of these young girls, and the generation that they represent.  The unfinishedness of this conclusion echoes the liminality of the climate – in the months preceding Franco’s death – in which the film was produced.

References:
Halberstam, J. (2011) – The Queer Art of Failure, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Kinder, M. (1983) – ‘The Children of Franco in the New Spanish Cinema,’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 8.2, pp.57-76.


Bio:
Fiona Noble is currently working towards the completion of her PhD in Hispanic Studies and Film & Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen, where she also completed her MLitt (in Visual Culture with Distinction) and MA (with Joint Honours in French and Hispanic Studies).  Her research centres on notions of transitory subjectivities in contemporary Spain, an issue she explores through three key figures of post-Franco Spanish cinema: the child, the performer, and the immigrant. She writes the blog spanishcinephilia.

Monday 17 June 2013

The industrial contexts of national stardom: a Spanish case study

    Last week I attended the three-day 'Revisiting Star Studies: An International Conference' at Newcastle University. I really enjoyed the conference - it was lovely to meet so many other people researching my own specific area of interest, but also interesting to hear different facets of star studies being investigated in a multitude of cultural contexts.
   My own contribution was a paper on the industrial contexts of Spanish stardom. I'm posting the paper in its entirety, complete with the slides from my powerpoint presentation. It's my habit to write notes / digressions in the margins of my papers, usually in abbreviated form - I've included those here by putting them in square brackets within the text at the point at which I mentioned them (likewise my instruction to myself to change the slide is also included). If I expand this into an article (the 20 minutes time-limit does restrict the level of detail), aside from going into more detail about Noriega's star image (which I only touch upon briefly here) and a broader take on the industrial issues, I'd also like to develop how he fits into the panorama of contemporary Spanish stars (including box office trends and track records). If you're interested, a post I wrote last year looks at his star image in a bit more detail and in a slightly different context (you'll see that a couple of sections - particularly in relation to the Amenábar connection - are almost identical to the conference paper, but the focus is on a specific film - Mateo Gil's Nadie conoce a nadie / Nobody Knows Anybody).

   Industrial contexts are important in relation to national stardom because the majority of stars first ‘break out’, or achieve stardom, within their home market; the industrial and the national are by no means mutually exclusive given that any film industry (traditionally at least) makes films primarily for its native audience. Stars are drawn from the cinema that is being made in a given period, and cinemas are shaped by a combination of cultural and industrial imperatives; changes within a film industry can result in changes in the type of star and stardom produced. This paper will argue, following Andrew Willis (2004), that stars cannot be separated from the industrial contexts of their production, and that they can also be seen to be as reflective of their industry as they are of contemporaneous cultural assumptions. I'm going to be using Spanish cinema and stardom from the 1990s onwards by way of illustration, and for the purposes of this paper Eduardo Noriega will be my central example. [SLIDE]


Noriega emerged in the mid-1990s and he therefore overlaps two quite distinct ‘groups’ of contemporary Spanish stars of the last twenty years: that of Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Jordi Mollà in the early 90s, and a later group that could be said to centre on the 2002 musical comedy El otro lado de la cama / The Other Side of the Bed (the central male cast of which have worked together multiple times) - arguably this overlap is manifested in how his stardom shares different traits with both groups.
    As the boundaries of ‘Spanish cinema’ have expanded (to produce an increasingly internationalised form of cinema), industrial imperatives (i.e. what the industry requires of its stars) gradually increased their influence over the star image after 1992 [an important year – a cultural flashpoint for Spain] and an overt relationship with the national became less important. So while in the cases of Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, overtly national factors and characteristics were the more important aspects at the start of their careers (and remain ingrained in their star images), with Eduardo Noriega the balance starts to shift towards the industrial imperatives and the more generic aspects of stardom. For example, although like Bardem and Cruz, Noriega has many explicit interactions with the national onscreen, Chris Perriam notes in his 2003 study of stars and masculinities in Spanish cinema that while most male Spanish stars are presented as 'normal / ordinary' rather than 'glamorous', the younger Noriega was consistently 'presented as first and foremost gifted with special sex appeal' (2003: 7) -and arguably this is increasingly becoming the norm for new male Spanish stars. Edgar Morin emphasises the importance of the role that turns an actor into a star ([1960] 2005: 29) because that role shapes the career and stardom that follows, and the differences in how Spanish stars are shaped by the contexts of the Spanish film industry can also be traced back to their respective early roles, suggesting that just as ‘nationhood is always an image constructed under particular conditions’ (Higson [1989] 2002: 139) the same is also true of national stardom. With this in mind, I now turn to the state of the Spanish film industry in the 1990s, and then how Noriega's star image fits within it.
    In the early 90s, the Spanish film industry was stagnating, reaching its nadir in 1994 when only 44 films were produced and Spanish cinema received just 7% market share of audience figures. Eduardo Rodríguez Merchán and Gema Fernández-Hoya link the culmination of problems in 1994 in part to the lack of specific support for new directors between 1990 and 1994 (when there were no subsidies for directorial debuts); they argue that the reinstatement of that specific subsidy was a decisive factor in the upturn and cambio generacional that Spanish cinema then experienced (2008: 28-29). [SLIDE]


There was a massive influx of new directors after that point. While the new group of filmmakers who arrived in the mid-to-late 90s have few elements in common other than the coincidence of the timing of their arrival in the industry, the sheer number of them profoundly changed the make up of the Spanish film industry, and Spanish cinema, as their work encompasses a disparate range of styles and genres. 
    This commercially adept and cine-literate generation of filmmakers overtly and explicitly took inspiration from Hollywood films and formats, and reinvigorated Spanish cinema. Many of the new directors were within the same age range as their intended audiences - and in common with their cinema-going peers, they wanted to watch films that were entertaining; their capacity to see cinema as a commercial venture meant that many of them embraced genres that had previously been -and arguably still are in Spain- looked down on, and made their films financially successful. Barry Jordan and Mark Allinson argue that these directors have succeeded in balancing the commercial and the artistic, with the influx of talent leading to ‘the emergence of a broadly commercial, entertainment-driven, Spanish cinema, involving new sets of narrative, generic, thematic, stylistic, technical, and casting concerns and choices’ (2005: 30).
    In combining cinematic influences from inside and outside Spain, these new directors are integral to the creation of Spanish stars in this period; the Spanish stars who have emerged in the last twenty years (effectively a 'post-Banderas' generation [he made his Hollywood debut in 1992]) reflect the cultural hybridity that is increasingly inherent to Spanish cinemas, as evidenced by their own increased ability to operate transnationally. At the same time, the filmographies of the stars I have mentioned are also indicative of the heterogeneity of Spanish cinema in this era, as a variety of genres and styles are represented by a range of both new and established directors; they offer a Spanish illustration of Ginette Vincendeau’s observation that in smaller film industries there can be a ‘co-existence of mainstream and auteur cinema in a single star’s image’ (2000: 2).
     Alejandro Amenábar is usually the example given (alongside Álex de la Iglesia) when commentators discuss the visual and narrative changes that this new ‘generation’ of filmmakers heralded for Spanish cinema, and it was in Amenábar's early films that Eduardo Noriega started his screen career. [AA remains a key part of EN’s ‘star narrative’ – still mentioned in EN’s interviews/profiles – their friendship predates their arrival in the industry - they made short films together while AA at uni & EN at drama school - the roles in the features were written for EN] Making his debut in Amenábar’s work positioned Noriega within this generational shift in a different way to either Javier Bardem or Penélope Cruz; although those two were undeniably at the vanguard of a new generation of Spanish stars in the early 90s, they started their ascendancy in collaboration with established directors (Bigas Luna and Fernando Trueba) whereas Noriega did so alongside a new directorial talent and a different set of industrial contexts -what 'Spanish cinema' consisted of was already undergoing change. [SLIDE]


That Noriega's star image avoids the stereotypically Spanish is not mere happenstance given that he emerged in a Spanish film industry that was becoming increasingly globalised through the use of genres not commonly associated with 'Spanish cinema' (epitomised by Amenábar's films).
    The two feature-length films that Noriega made with Amenábar - Tesis and Abre los ojos - both ostensibly avoid overt Spanish references and settings - Amenábar has suggested that the films could be set in different cities (and countries) without changing the narrative (Payán 2001: 45) [Abre remade as Vanilla Sky]. The two films approach the national in an abstract manner through the themes of urban alienation and the fragility of contemporary masculine identities… [SLIDE] 


…although Paul Julian Smith argues that the highlighting of certain architectural features means that 'Amenábar's transnational shooting style is [...] firmly anchored in settings as distinctively Castilian as the spoken accents of his young stars' (2013: 147). At the same time, the alienation effect that occurs in a Madrid made foreign in Abre los ojos is not only indicative of Amenábar aiming for an international marketplace, but also representative of Spain coming to see itself differently in light of social changes and the resulting uncertainty as to what Spanishness now ‘is’. Noriega’s early characters – and this is true of other films he made in the late 90s as well as the Amenábar collaborations - are correspondingly unsure of their place in the world and arguably project a fear about losing touch with cultural roots and what will happen as Spain continues to change (will it still recognisably be Spain?). 
     The Amenábar films contain several elements that continuously resurface in Eduardo Noriega’s later films and star image: psychological instabilities; the act of looking / significant looks; a link between geographical dislocation and a fragile sense of identity; an emphasis on his beautiful face; the thriller genre; and collaborations with new directors [EN has appeared in a significant number of directorial debuts] - these films also placed a greater emphasis on the generic over the nationally-specific in Noriega’s star image. [SLIDE] 


He has multiple interactions with the national in his later films [see slide] but he is not perceived as explicitly representing ‘the Spanish male’ (unlike Bardem), and instead ‘seductive menace’ and 'fragile identities' have become dominant star traits. There is generally a greater emphasis on the requirements of genre than on national specificities within his films; his most successful films are usually thrillers (the genre in which he made his name).
     Although he has consistently been associated with the thriller, and he is considered 'bankable' by Spanish producers (de la Torriente 2007: 84) because of his box office track record with that genre, he is not a 'star brand' in the sense of a commercial formula that is repeated over and over. [and I don't think he would be interested in doing that] [SLIDE] 


To date Noriega has appeared in 25 Spanish feature productions, and as well as the successes shown in the slide, he also has 10 films that have accrued fewer than 100,000 spectators during their Spanish theatrical release. [His filmography encompasses the spectrum of Spanish production – from super-production Alatriste (>3 million spectators) to, at other end of scale, indie drama Petit Indi (<12,000 spectators)] He has had a very diverse career -due to a concerted effort on his part to reside within the art-house categories of cinema- but his star image is integrally connected to the mainstream generic frameworks of his more successful films and the increasingly international form of cinema being produced in Spain. Philip Drake says that stars are ‘a means by which Hollywood has been able to present itself as a global rather than national film industry’ (2004: 76); the newest Spanish stars are symptomatic of the aspirations of the Spanish film industry to tap into the global film market and not be restricted by their national boundaries - it is noticeable that several of Noriega's forays into English-language cinema position him within the genre that he has had most commercial success with at home, for example, Vantage Point (2008) and Transsiberian (2008) [both in the thriller spectrum & interestingly both engage with his existing star image in terms of the moral ambiguity he can bring to a role]. On the one hand this supports the reading of cinematic genres as ‘the meeting place between a variety of diverse forces that necessarily operate within but also across territorial spaces’ (Beck and Rodríguez Ortega 2008: 1), but it also arguably points to Noriega's star image translating to, or being readable in, other national spaces.
     Although the increasing ease with which contemporary Spanish stars now circulate abroad is indicative of their having participated in, and been shaped by, this international-style cinema at home, the increasing number of Spanish actors attempting to start international careers (Abril 2009) also highlights the perception of perpetual ‘crisis’ in the Spanish film industry. [SLIDE] 


At a basic level, the boost in production caused by the influx of talent does also have negative aspects - namely that the Spanish marketplace cannot support the volume of Spanish films being made. But at the moment a number of factors are contributing to a particularly dark outlook for Spanish cinema - the box office takings so far this year in Spain (for all films, not just Spanish ones) are down 40% on what they were in the same period in 2012 (García 2013) [this is being specifically linked to the tax issue & the rise in ticket prices]. Despite the commercial success of a range of Spanish films in the last twenty years, the Spanish film industry is still perceived as an unstable entity that is overly reliant on a handful of key directors to keep it buoyant - there is a widespread belief that ‘Spanish cinema’ is sporadically (if not permanently) in ‘crisis’, and this has contributed to the decision taken by a range of Spanish stars to work abroad. [SLIDE] 


The periods of absence that are increasingly prevalent in the careers of big names (for example, Penélope Cruz was absent from Spanish cinema for five years between 2001 and 2006, and Javier Bardem had a similar gap after the release of Mar adentro in 2004 [most famous example of extended absence = Banderas – 1992 until 2011 & Almodóvar’s La piel que habito]) are also an outward sign that all is not well within Spanish cinema. Arguably it leads to a vicious circle wherein industrial instability leads the stars to work abroad, which in turn leads to further instability. It should be noted that Noriega, despite an increasing number of projects abroad (10 films so far -mainly in France and the US), has continued to average at least one Spanish film a year - but he has started to become more proactive in developing projects for himself. [SLIDE]


This year will see the release of a film, a psychological thriller, that he co-wrote and in which he takes the lead role. He has also taken another career path that is becoming increasingly common, and branched into television -it is fairly common for Spanish stars to start their careers in television and indeed a number of them continue to switch back and forth between the two formats, but Noriega has no prior relation with TV - but in 2011 he took the lead in a TV series, one that again hooks into the genre expectations of his star image. [he plays a criminal psychologist – consultant to a homicide unit]
      In summary, it is with Noriega that we start to see a distinct change in terms of how the star image interacts with the national in Spain, in a way that can be clearly traced back to the industrial contexts of his initial films. For many of the newest Spanish stars, an overt relationship with the national has lost some of its importance in terms of what the industry requires of its stars; national specificities shape the form that Spanish stardom takes only to the extent that the star (and the film industry) feel it is politic for their image to be shaded with national ‘colour’ and there is increasingly a greater emphasis on the generic elements of stardom. Nonetheless, these stars and their images still originate from (and circulate within) a Spanish context. Ultimately Eduardo Noriega relates to a specifically Spanish cultural environment through the themes, concerns, and narratives of his films, but just as his increasingly transnational career is simultaneously symptomatic of both the success and crisis of Spanish cinema in this era, overall his star image is more obviously defined by the generational shift in Spanish cinema and the accompanying changes in visual and narrative style.

References:
Abril, G. (2009) -'Qué duro es el cine', El País Semanal, 1st February, pp.34-49.
Beck, J. and V. Rodríguez Ortega (2008) - 'Introduction', Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre, edited by J. Beck and V. Rodríguez Ortega, Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, pp.1-23.
de la Torriente, E. (2007) - 'Noriega da el gran salto', El País Semanal, 18th November, pp.78-85.
Drake, P. (2004) - 'Jim Carrey: The cultural politics of dumbing down', in Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond, edited by A. Willis, Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, pp.71-88.
García, R. (2013) - '¿Cines en crisis? Rebajas a la vista', El País, 25th May.  
Heredero, C. (2003) -'New Creators for the New Millennium: Transforming the Directing Scene in Spain', Cineaste, Contemporary Spanish Cinema supplement, Winter, pp.32-37. Translated by D. West and I.M. West.
Higson, A. ([1989] 2002) -'The Concept of National Cinema', reprinted in The European Cinema Reader, edited by C. Fowler, London & New York: Routledge, pp.132-42.
Jordan, B. and M. Allinson (2005) - Spanish Cinema: A student's guide, London: Hodder Arnold.
Morin, E. ([1961] 2005) - The Stars, Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press. Translated by R. Howard.
Payán, M.J. (2001) - Cine español actual, Madrid: Ediciones JC.
Perriam, C. (2003) - Stars and Masculinities in Spanish Cinema: From Banderas to Bardem, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rodríguez Merchán, E. and G. Fernández-Hoya (2008) - 'La definitiva renovación generacional (1990-2005)', in Miradas sobre pasado y presente en el cine español, edited by P. Feenstra and H. Hermans, Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, pp.23-35.
Ros, A. (2012) - 'Proyectos de 2012 que no han visto la luz: Historias (aún) sin rostro', Academia, December, pp.35-40.
Santamarina, A. (2006) - '¿Renovación o continuidad? La mirada de los novatos', in Miradas para un nuevo milenio: Fragmentos para una historia futura del cine español, edited by Hilario J. Rodríguez, Madrid: Festival de Cine de Alcalá de Henares, pp.295-302.
Smith, P.J. (2013) - 'Alejandro Amenábar', in A Companion to Spanish Cinema, edited by J. Labanyi and T. Pavlović, Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp.144-149.
Vincendeau, G. (2000) - Stars and Stardom in French Cinema, London & New York: Continuum.
Willis, A. (2004) - 'Introduction', Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond, edited by A. Willis, Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, pp.1-7.
Yáñez, J. (2008) - 'El cine español que no estrena', Cahiers du cinema España, No.8, January, pp.50-52.

Thursday 6 June 2013

Revisiting Star Studies - An International Conference, Newcastle University, 12th-14th June 2013

My title and abstract are as follows:

The industrial contexts of national stardom: a Spanish case study.

Despite stardom's industrial dimension being routinely passed over in critical analyses, the industrial contexts of stardom in a given national culture is integral to both the form and content of stardom and the star image. This paper will argue, following Willis (2004), that stars cannot be separated from the industrial contexts of their production, and that they also can be seen to be as reflective of their industry as they are of contemporaneous cultural assumptions. Due to a number of nationally-specific factors in the Spanish film industry since the 1990s, 'Spanish cinema' has been becoming a more nebulous and hybrid entity. If stars are 'a means by which Hollywood has been able to present itself as a global rather than a national film industry' (Drake 2004: 76), this paper examines what the impact on Spanish stardom has been of Spanish stars and their images circulating in a national cinema that has increasingly acknowledged and utilised the codes and conventions of a more international form of cinema production. This paper will take as its main example Eduardo Noriega, a Spanish star who emerged in the late 1990s, the point at which a shift in the balance of factors (industrial versus national and / or cultural) shaping Spanish stardom was becoming apparent, and will also suggest that the trend for Spanish stars crossing national boundaries to further their careers is simultaneously symptomatic of both success and crisis in the Spanish cinema of this era.

The website for the conference can be found here. The programme and all of the collected abstracts can be downloaded.
I will put my full paper up on the blog the week after the conference.

Thursday 9 May 2013

Los amantes pasajeros / I'm So Excited! (Pedro Almodóvar, 2013)



Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Javier Cámara (Joserra), Carlos Areces (Fajas), Raúl Arévalo (Ulloa), Antonio de la Torre (Álex Acero), Lola Dueñas (Bruna), Carmen Machi (concierge), Laya Martí (Bride), Cecilia Roth (Norma Boss), Hugo Silva (Benito), Miguel Ángel Silvestre (Groom), Blanca Suárez (Ruth), Guillermo Toledo (Ricardo Galán), José Luis Torrijo (Más), Paz Vega (Alba), José María Yazpik (Infante).
Synopsis: Madrid, the present. A flight to Mexico takes off with a fault with its landing gear and subsequently circles the skies over Spain while the authorities look for an appropriate place for an emergency landing. The crew sedate the economy class passengers but have their work cut out with the people in business class. As the air stewards put on their best performances, the booze flows and pills are popped, secrets tumble out and inhibitions are lost.

These are just initial thoughts - I'm writing this the same day I saw the film.

    I went in with my expectations lowered, in part because I got too hyped about La piel que habito but also because I was aware that the reviews have been mixed (I didn't read any beforehand), and probably enjoyed it all the more for that: this is froth, but enjoyable froth.
    In fact while the surface of the film is frothy entertainment, there is also a mild satire of the mess that Spain is currently in underneath - the disclaimer at the start of the film saying that this is a work of fiction should be taken with a pinch of salt (the names may have been changed but events on the ground have a basis in reality), as Maria Delgado writes: 'The terms "recession" or "economic crisis" are conspicuously absent from the film, but the Guadiana plotline offers pertinent comment on a society where patronage, politics and public administration are inextricably interwoven' (2013: 40). I guess how much of that undercurrent to the film that you pick up on is dependent on how aware you are of Spanish current affairs.
    Delgado also draws parallels with A Midsummer Night's Dream ('magical makeovers are matched by erotic gameplay' (2013: 38)) and the Valencia cocktail (dosed with mescaline) stands in for the love potion. I like that reading because I think the film can function as a dreamy in-between world - after the Banderas/Cruz prologue the camera closes in on the engine turbine rotating, like milk in black coffee, a kind of hypnotic effect that perhaps signals that what follows is not 'real'. Certainly, up in the clouds, circling with no apparent destination, the passengers are suspended from reality and acting out a farce (signalled by the theatrical red curtains that divide the space) - a diversion for the crew as much as anything else (the 'public' telephone delivering instalments of a soap opera, or glimpses of other possible films).
    I've seen remarks comparing the film to Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios ('a male version') but actually the style of comedy lacks the sophistication of that film and instead harks back to the crude and scatological humour of Almodóvar's very early films such as Pepi, Luci, Bom and Laberinto de pasiones. That kind of humour is not to everyone's taste (those latter two films are not among my favourites) but I think that a lot depends on the characters (and actors) delivering the lines - the air stewards (played by Cámara, Areces, and Arévalo) are written and performed with affection and I think they're probably destined to be regarded as 'classic' Almodóvar characters in much the same way that Agrado (Antonia San Juan) became the standout of Todo sobre mi madre. The dance sequence to The Pointer Sisters' 'I'm So Excited', a longer sequence than is in the trailer, made me cry with laughter -I don't know that any further recommendation is necessary. If I come back to the film again later, I think I'll look a bit more at the actors / performances involved and the side stories -for example, the Ricardo Galán strand in which an actor drives one of his exes mad and another leaves him in order to maintain her sanity has obvious links to Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, but Blanca Suárez's Ruth (in her floral sundress) also cuts a Kika-ish dash through proceedings (also in relation to this plotline: can I ask someone, but Almodóvar in particular, to give Paz Vega another decent lead role in something - she only has a few minutes here but you forget all else while she is onscreen).
    In short, if you go expecting an Almodóvarian dramedy, you will probably be 'disappointed', but if you want a giggle, then the current band of chicos Almodóvar will entertain you.


References:
Delgado, M. (2013) - 'Wings of Desire', Sight & Sound, May, pp.36-38, 40.

Thursday 25 April 2013

Carlos Saura Challenge, Part 6: La prima Angélica / Cousin Angelica (1974)



Director: Carlos Saura
Screenplay: Rafael Azcona, based on a story by Carlos Saura and Elías Querjeta
Cast: José Luis López Vázquez, Lina Canalejas, Fernando Delgado, Lola Cardona, María Clara Fernández de Loayza, Josefina Díaz, Encarna Paso, Pedro Sempson, Julieta Serrano.
Synopsis: 1973. Luis Cano (López Vázquez) travels from Barcelona to fulfil his late mother's wishes to have her remains interred in the family crypt in Segovia. The trip brings him face to face with the family members he stayed with during the Civil War and leads him to confront the memories and ghosts of his childhood.

   La prima Angélica is another of Saura's films that centres on the issue of memory and shares with El jardín de las delicias not only a lead actor (José Luis López Vázquez) but also the use of him to portray a character in both adulthood and childhood. We first see Luis-as-child when Luis-as-adult pulls his car to the side of the road as he sees Segovia in the distance and he becomes lost in the memory of the first time he was at this roadside - his father's car pulls up behind him and his mother (dressed in 1930s attire) comforts Luis and tries to reassure him about his stay with her side of the family (on the right, politically) in a safer area while his parents return to Barcelona. As the Civil War develops, Barcelona becomes cut off, and Luis will see out the war apart from his parents and in the midst of a family from the 'victorious' side. His return to Segovia as an adult in his 40s shows how those war years shaped the person he became and why he now feels the need to confront the past. D'Lugo observes that the film stands as 'the first compassionate view of the vanquished' (1991: 116):
'In choosing the theme of interdicted history -the Civil War years as remembered by the child of Republican parents- Saura pursues more than just the external demons of censorship that had suppressed all but the triumphalist readings of the war. He confronts the psychological and ethical traumas that the official distortions of the history of the war years in public discourse had conveniently ignored but that had scarred and even paralysed a generation of Spaniards' (1991: 115-116).
Quintana points out that in the context of Spain today, and the contentious issue of 'historical memory', 'Luis's character gains symbolic force as the first fictional character that recovers the power of memory as an act of resurrection of the hidden and of justice to that which is silenced' (2008: 95). La prima Angélica was controversial and had its release curtailed (one Barcelona cinema that screened it was firebombed), but also became the most commercially-successful film of Saura's career at that point (Quintana 2008: 87).
    As with El jardín de las delicias the past is not simply evoked, but reenacted. Although it is perhaps more accurate to say that it is being 'relived', as these are not the theatrical stagings of the earlier film but rather Luis weaving in and out of the present and the past as the return to the family apartment envelops him in memories. Another conceit that is repeated from earlier Saura films is to have the same actors playing more than one character: Lina Canalejas plays Angélica's mother in the 1930s segments and the grown-up Angélica in the present; María Clara Fernández de Loayza plays Angélica in the 1930s and the grown-up Angélica's daughter (also called Angélica) in the present; Fernando Delgado plays both Angélica's father and later her husband (although this is one of the points where the tricks that memory can play on you are pointed out - the grown-up Angélica shows Luis a photo of her father to prove that there is no resemblance to her husband). This 'doubling' obviously aids the transition back and forth in Luis's memory onscreen, which occasionally becomes confusing as Luis loses himself in the past and the lines between the two eras become indistinct. López Vázquez is the only actor to play the same character in both eras - Luis's childhood self is distinguished by voice, body language, and facial expression: for example, his habit of tucking his chin down so that he is looking up (his eyes wide) serves not only to indicate the shy and withdrawn nature of the boy, but also to make the actor seem physically smaller. One particular sequence that I liked comes almost halfway into the film, at the point when Luis has carried out his mother's wishes and is driving back to Barcelona. He stops at the same roadside and the same memory that we saw at the start of the film plays out again. But this time, instead of being immersed in the memory, reliving it, he observes it from the other side of the road; in revisiting the sites of childhood trauma, he has acquired some of the distance required to review the past objectively. He turns his car around and heads back to Segovia to confront the past head on.


References:
D'Lugo, M. (1991) - The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Quintana, À. (2008) - 'A Poetics of Splitting: Memory and Identity in La prima Angélica (Carlos Saura, 1974)', in Burning Darkness: A Half Century of Spanish Cinema, edited by J.R. Resina, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp.83-96.

Thursday 4 April 2013

The Carlos Saura Challenge, Part 5: Ana y los lobos / Ana and the Wolves (1972)




Director: Carlos Saura
Screenplay: Rafael Azcona and Carlos Saura, based on an idea by Carlos Saura and Elías Querejeta
Cast: Geraldine Chaplin, Fernando Fernán Gómez, José María Prada, José Vivó, Rafaela Aparicio, Charo Soriano, Marisa Porcel, Anny Quintas, María José Puerta, Nuria Lage, Sara Gil.
Synopsis: An English nanny, Ana (Chaplin), arrives at a house in the Spanish countryside to look after the children of one of three brothers (Fernán Gómez, Prada, Vivó) living with their mother (Aparicio). All three brothers become captivated by Ana, who finds herself living in an increasingly disturbing and dangerous situation.

Warning: contains spoilers, including the ending.

    From the first appearance of the men in the film -José (Prada) entering the newly-arrived Ana's bedroom and insisting on seeing her passport and inspecting the contents of her suitcase- there is the unsettling sense that the foreigner has wandered into something beyond her ken (her passport may show her to be much-travelled but she is still naive). Soon enough she has José showing off his collection of military uniforms to her and commanding dominance of the household, Fernando (Fernán Gómez) explaining his pursuit of a union with God (or at least levitation) in the whitewashed cave at the bottom of the garden, and Juan (Vivó), the children's father, making amorous advances and sending her erotic letters with international postmarks (by using stamps from the family's stamp collection). The men essentially represent three taboos of Spanish culture at the time - the military, religion, sex - but in a slightly more neutered form than they might have taken (José isn't in the military, he just collects uniforms, and Fernando isn't a priest). They're almost living out a kind of stunted adolescence - or rather, in still living with their mother, they have managed to avoid maturing into adults; there's something quite childlike about their enthusiasm for their respective 'interests'.
    But the doll is really the first clue that what is going on is not just harmless fantasy. The three children (Puerta, Lage, Gil) dig up a doll that has had its hair cut off before being wrapped in a shroud, tied with string and buried in the garden. Ana intuits that there is something disturbing at play (the children say that 'the wolves' have done it) and insists that Juan tells her who has 'tortured' the doll but seemingly takes no further action (or precaution) on being told that it was Fernando. It's interesting that Higginbotham refers to the film as a 'grim parable' (1988: 86) because there's something fairytale-like about it and it also carries with it the sensation that certain sequences could be being dreamt by one of the characters - the parallels between Fernando's 'vision' of the various members of the household early in the film and the set of events leading up to Ana's eviction from the house and the brutal finale (several characters including, most pertinently, Ana, are wearing the same clothes in both sequences) suggests that not everything we see actually happens. Saura has said that he saw the final sequence as imaginary ([1979] 2003: 53) (Ana is expelled from the house when Mama (Aparicio) realises how much discord she has sowed, and as she leaves the grounds she is pounced upon by the three brothers - Juan rapes her, Fernando cuts off her hair, and José handcuffs her before shooting her in the head - the film ends on a close-up of her agonised face), which explains how the family (and Ana) can be revisited in Mamá cumple 100 años / Mama Turns 100 (1979).
   Overall the film made me feel uneasy, mainly because of the extent to which Ana plays games with the brothers, teases them, and plays the coquette, seemingly unaware that she is seriously out of her depth - there is a creeping sense, heightened after the doll is found, that something terrible will occur (which it does -whether imaginary or not).


References:
Castro, A. ([1979] 2003) -'Interview with Carlos Saura', Dirigido por, 69, pp.44-50, reprinted in Carlos Saura: Interviews, edited by Linda M. Willem, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, pp.52-64.
Higginbotham, V. (1988) - Spanish Film Under Franco, Austin: University of Texas Press.

Thursday 28 March 2013

The Carlos Saura Challenge, Part 4: El jardín de las delicias / The Garden of Delights (1970)



Director: Carlos Saura
Screenplay: Rafael Azcona and Carlos Saura
Cast: José Luis López Vázquez, Francisco Pierrá, Luchy Soto, Lina Canalejas, Esperanza Roy, Charo Soriano.
Synopsis: Antonio Cano (López Vázquez), an important businessman, is left partially-paralysed and an amnesiac after a car crash. His family and friends try to recreate key moments in his life in order to give him an emotional jolt and aid his recuperation. He spends each day sitting in his garden, accompanied by memories and ghosts of the past.

Warning: contains spoilers.

   After the relatively straightforward linearity of Peppermint frappé (and skipping Stress-es-tres-tres and La madriguera due to their unavailability) comes El jardín de las delicias, in structural terms by far the most complex film Saura had made. The film operates in five planes, identified within the shooting script (D'Lugo 1991: 101), which we move between without transition (although Pavlović notes that Antonio's amnesia 'links all five continua' (2006: 151)) - Kovacs (1981) has labelled the planes thus: 'the recreated past', a series of scenes staged by Antonio's father (Pierrá) of key moments in his son's life, but which parallel key moments in Spanish history; 'the present day frame', Antonio being taken care of by his wife (Soto) and father, and being pushed to remember via memory tests with collections of old photos, or a staged reencounter with his mistress (Roy) who was in the car crash with him; 'evoked past', Antonio's own independent memories of the key moments in his life; 'the "oneiric" world', threatening hallucinations that Antonio suffers while sitting in the garden; 'a future plane', as Antonio starts coming back to himself, he begins to '[resist] the pattern of existence his family has thrust upon him' (D'Lugo 1991: 102). This intentionally intricate structure was to act as a kind of smokescreen, or a least a counterbalance, to the more political aspects of the film in an era when censorship by the Franco regime was becoming increasingly arbitrary. The original script was passed by the censors, with one writing in his evaluation that 'the advantage of such an intellectualised plot is that nobody can grasp the key to it, and the set-ups are so extremely limited in meaning that nobody can identify with anything' (D'Lugo 1991: 106) - although specific cuts were then made to the film by the censors (but unlike the case of Llanto por un bandido, those cut elements seem to have been reinstated in the version I watched).
    Despite the structure appearing complex when laid out as above, it is comprehensible when watched onscreen (although some confusion/disorientation is intentional - it is a point of connection between Antonio and the audience), with differing levels of theatricality being utilised in the different planes (for example, there is some wonderful over-acting by the actress hired to impersonate Antonio's late mother in the scenes from his childhood, whereas his wife Luchy is more subtle in her manipulation of 'reality' -we see that she is playing 'mood music' on a cassette player when she takes Antonio for a walk). Also, you don't have to be aware of all of the references to know that a point is being made - I didn't know that Antonio's car crash was inspired by the 1962 death (in a car crash) of Juan March, an industrialist who had helped bankroll the July 1936 military uprising against the Republic (there are enough parallels to see Saura as deliberately baiting the censors), but the moments of historical significance that parallel (and interrupt) the restaged moments of Antonio's life clearly indicate that 'Antonio's identity is inseparable from a broader historical context. [...] These national "traumas" give rise to personal ones, showing how the individual is an inscrutable product of the nation' (Pavlović 2006: 156).
    Likewise, Saura uses the institution of the family to equate with the state apparatus: the film 'insistently identifies the Francoist family as the social apparatus that replicates on the personal plane the ideology of the state, constructing the prismatic frame of reference through which the individual's consciousness of himself takes place' (D'Lugo 1991: 102). The 'ideal' family, so deified by the state, is shown to be anything but: not only are they collectively a suffocating and repressive force in Antonio's life, but we eventually find that their interest in his recuperation isn't entirely motivated by love and affection (his father needs to know the number of the Swiss bank account, and his wife wants the combination to the safe in the bedroom). [side-note: some of the events that they chose to recreate to jog Antonio's memory include childhood traumas - being locked in a dark room, aged 5, with an enormous pig that you've been told will eat your hands off, seems an horrific thing to inflict on someone twice in their lifetime]. D'Lugo suggests that the final sequence of the film, another of Antonio's hallucinations - this time of each family member in their own wheelchair on the vast lawn, is a tableau 'approximating a contemporary version of one of Bosch's panels in his "Garden of Delights"' (1991: 106), while Pavlović suggests that it 'points to the endless proliferation of cruelty in a system where both victims and victimisers are irreparably crippled' (2006: 158). But with his family in a similar state to Antonio (who having made progress, is now regressing) I read it as representing the wilful amnesia of people avoiding their own culpability, and also (as they are all facing in different directions) unable to see things from alternative viewpoints.
    The impression that we get of Antonio as he recovers what he was (before seemingly rejecting that vision and sliding back into oblivion) is that he was not a particularly likeable man (he is 'a prototypical product of dictatorial structure, an embodiment of Francoist zeitgeist' (Pavlović 2006: 156)). But when we first meet him, he is a blank slate (and as confused as we are by the events being staged in front of him) and I think that the audience remains on his side because of that initial blankness (the innocence of a child) and also because of the associated affability of López Vázquez, who is quite brilliant in the role. The film is also darkly funny (Colmeiro points to the film following in the tradition of Buñuel, Berlanga, and the esperpento of Valle-Inclán (2001: 284)) -alongside Peppermint frappé, this is the film that I have most enjoyed watching so far in the challenge.

a blank slate
References:
Colmeiro, J.F. (2001) - 'Metateatralidad y psicodrama: los escenarios de la memoria en el cine de Carlos Saura', Anales de la literatura española contemporánea, 26:1, pp.277-298.
D'Lugo, M (1991) - The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kovacs, K. (1981) - 'Loss and Recuperation in The Garden of Delights', Cine-Tracts, 4:2-3, pp.45-54. [I haven't managed to get hold of this yet but the outline of the narrational planes is quoted in D'Lugo]
Pavlović, T. (2006) - 'Allegorising the body politic: Masculinity and history in Saura's El jardín de las delicias (1970) and Almodóvar's Carne trémula (1997)', Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, 3:3, pp.149-167.

Thursday 14 March 2013

The Carlos Saura Challenge, Part 3: Peppermint frappé (1967)



Director: Carlos Saura
Screenplay: Carlos Saura, Angelino Fons, and Rafael Azcona
Cast: Geraldine Chaplin, José Luis López Vázquez, Alfredo Mayo.
Synopsis: Julián's (López Vázquez) childhood friend Pablo (Mayo) returns to their hometown with his new wife, Elena (a blonde Chaplin). Julián becomes obsessed with Elena, who reminds him of a woman he saw beating a drum during the famous Holy Week ritual in Calanda (also Chaplin). Although rebuffed by Elena, Julián continues his pursuit while simultaneously remodelling his assistant, Ana (a brunette Chaplin), in her image.

Warning: contains a spoiler

    As I've mentioned previously, part of my reason for doing the challenge is that I've seen very few of Saura's films (mainly because of their lack of availability in subtitled form -none of the films I've covered so far have been subtitled), but his career also covers eras of Spanish cinema that I'm unfamiliar with, so I'm hoping that this will broaden my field of reference. What's funny about this is when, watching a film you know next to nothing about, you suddenly see a links to another (more recent) filmmaker. Peppermint frappé is dedicated to Luis Buñuel (who Saura considered a mentor) and there is a lot of Buñuelian sexual fetishising going on -apparently there are many parallels with Buñuel's El (1953), but I haven't had time to watch that film before writing this. But the director who most sprang to mind from the opening credits (Julián assiduously cutting out images from women's fashion magazines and pasting them into a scrapbook) onwards was Almodóvar. Except, of course, Pedro came along more than a decade later. Obviously Buñuel also had a strong influence on Almodóvar, but the central conceit of Peppermint frappé -a man goes slightly mad through jealousy and sexual obsession, and attempts to mould one woman into the image of another, before moving on to murder- and the way in which the women are effectively reduced to the accoutrements of femininity (false eyelashes, lipstick, lace stockings), just struck me as being particularly Almodóvarian and certainly not that far away from some of the films he has made (I had a moment of thinking that La piel que habito is set in the same locale as Peppermint frappé, but it isn't). I guess I wasn't expecting to see any connections between Saura and Almodóvar because they've always seemed to me to be very different filmmakers in both style and content, but it would appear that their common influences allow for some crossover.
    For me, the main element of interest in Peppermint frappé was seeing Geraldine Chaplin play three characters within the same narrative - the woman in Calanda (Buñuel's native town and somewhere Saura visited with him (D'Lugo 1991: 69)) who made such a powerful impression on Julián is only seen in a very brief flashback (although she is 'performed' by both Elena and Ana, in different contexts), but Elena and Ana are clearly differentiated in terms of personality, appearance, and Chaplin's performance(s). If I come back to the film later in the year, I think that would be the aspect I look at in a bit more detail - although if I get around to watching El, then that may be another angle to take.
    Peppermint frappé is said to form a trilogy of sorts with Saura's next two films - Stress-es-tres-tres / Stress is Three Three (1968) and La madriguera / Honeycomb (1969) (both of which also star Geraldine Chaplin) - but neither of them are available in any format, so the next post will jump forward to the 1970s and El jardin de las delicias / The Garden of Delights.

The woman in Calanda
Elena
Ana

Thursday 7 March 2013

The Carlos Saura Challenge, Part 2: La caza / The Hunt (1966)



Director: Carlos Saura
Screenplay: Carlos Saura and Angelino Fons
Cast: Ismael Merlo, Alfredo Mayo, José María Prada, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Fernando Sánchez Polack, Violeta García.
Synopsis: Old 'friends' José (Merlo), Paco (Mayo), and Luis (Prada) reunite after eight years for a day's hunting on José's country estate, with Paco's brother-in-law Enrique (Gutiérrez Caba) also enthusiastically tagging along. But as the day wears on, old tensions and fractures in their relationships become apparent and violence bubbles to the surface.

   Shot in crisp black and white (cinematography by Luis Cuadrado) and sharply edited by Pablo G del Amo (in the documentary about the latter, written about on here last year, the editor tells Saura that this is the only film that he revisits on a yearly basis), La caza marks Carlos Saura's first collaboration with producer Elías Querejeta (who had a preferred team of technical crew) and a stylistic leap on from Llanto por un bandido. The film is considered a landmark in Spanish cinema - 'together with Nueve cartas a Berta (Nine Letters to Berta, Basilio Martín Patino, 1966), [...] La caza is the most representative film of the mid-1960s cycle that came to be known as Nuevo cine español [New Spanish Cinema]' (Mira 2010: 71) - and won Saura the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1966 - his first international award.
   The film takes place in a location that had been a battlefield during the Civil War (D'Lugo 1991: 57), and 'the war' (the censors ensured that the Civil War is not explicitly mentioned) permeates the narrative and the relations between the men (the older three served together). The landscape, and the way it is presented onscreen, is a metonym for the psyches of those who survived the war: battle-scarred, with secrets and remnants of violence hidden in darker recesses. Alberto Mira notes that the use of metaphor and strong imagery 'went beyond narrative needs: the heat that drives characters to madness could be read in terms of the stifling atmosphere created in the country after the Civil War, and the butchery was easily read as a reference to the conflict itself [...]' (2010: 71). Hunting was strongly associated with the regime and there is also an intertextual reference being made with the casting of Alfredo Mayo:
'As a young man, Mayo built his career upon a series of forties films playing the role of the stalwart Nationalist hero fighting the Republican scourge. By far, the most influential of these was the role of José Churruca in Sáenz de Heredia's Raza. Not only did Mayo play the part of the nationalist patriot; his role was fashioned as a sanitized version of the Caudillo, replete with narrative parallels to Franco's own biography. Nowhere in The Hunt is there any overt reference to Mayo's former screen persona, yet implicitly, the character of Paco seems to represent a sequel to the earlier Alfredo Mayo, film-actor-as-national-hero. It is a shattering statement of the passage of time and the transformation of a bygone mythic hero into a venal and narcissistic old man.' (D'Lugo 1991: 57)
As an outsider to this clique, and crucially of a younger generation, Enrique is at one remove from the associations generated by the older men. He therefore acts as witness, and audience proxy, when bitter resentments and disappointments finally cause psychic breakdown and the men turn on each other with spectacular violence. The film ends with a freeze frame of his face, his panting still audible on the soundtrack, as he runs from the scene in horror.
    For the most part the film is realist in its depictions but the frequent extreme close-ups of sweating faces, of weapons and ammunition, and of rabbits in their death throes, give a slightly surreal edge to proceedings - almost a 'heightened' reality, or as if the camera is also feeling the effects of that relentless heat. It feels like a very modern film, not just visually but also in our access to the interiority of the characters:
'[...] Saura uses an experimental procedure which overlaps and contrasts with the realism: the interior monologues of the characters. They reveal their doubts, complex thoughts and passions that move them - the combination of their old friendship, resentment, envy - and it fills the silences, ellipses and insinuations of his dialogues until the final slaughter. Saura incorporates into cinematic introspection mechanisms that were being explored in contemporary literature (Luis Martín-Santos, Juan Goytisolo, Juan Marsé, Juan Benet, etc.).' (Sánchez-Biosca 2011: 117)
State of mind, or at least the animosity under the surface, is also signalled early on via the editing in the sequence where the men are preparing their weapons: a series of shot-reverse-shots show Paco in extreme close-up checking his sites facing right, then cuts to an extreme close-up of José doing the same but facing left (making it appear that they could be aiming at each other), the sequence of shots then repeats before a mid-distance shot establishes their actual positions in relation to each other (sitting alongside one another facing in opposite directions).



   Hopefully I will return to this film later in the year as I've barely scratched the surface in this short piece and many different angles could be taken -it is an incredibly rich text and a small mountain of material has been written on it (I've only read a fraction of it so far -I've found a book, La caza...42 años después [La caza...42 years later], which is a collection of articles about the film and looks really interesting but as it's in Spanish it'll take me a while to read). My intention with the future longer pieces is to draw groups of the films together, but obviously I can't start to think about that until I've watched more of them.

References:
Cueto, R. (ed.) (2008) - La caza...42 años después, Valencia: Ediciones de la Filmoteca.
D'Lugo, M. (1991) - The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mira, A. (2010) - The A to Z of Spanish Cinema, Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press.
Sánchez-Biosca, V. (2011) - 'La caza', in Directory of World Cinema: Spain, edited by Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano, Bristol: Intellect, pp.115-117.