Women in Spanish cinema: 'Raiders of the Missing Mother'?
Cineaste › Vol. 29 Nbr. 1, December 2003
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Women in Spanish cinema: 'Raiders of the Missing Mother'?
It is not by chance that, upon being given the opportunity to write about women in contemporary Spanish cinema, one would turn to the figure of the mother. This character has since the Eighties drawn the attention of critics such as Besas (1986), Hopewell (1986), Kinder (1993), and myself (Gamez Fuentes, 2003). Until recently, however, the mother in Spanish cinema has merely been read as the embodiment of the dictatorship period (1939-1975) due to the role accorded to her in emblematic films of the transition to democracy such as Furtivos/Poachers (Jose Luis Borau, 1975), Camada negra/Black Brood (Manuel Gutierrez Aragon, 1977), Ana y los lobos/Ana and the Wolves (Carlos Saura, 1972) and Mama cumple cien anos/Mum Turns a Hundred (Carlos Saura, 1979). Both the representations and their interpretations have been supported by the fact that during the Francoist dictatorship the regime manufactured a rigid discourse on women's identities as mothers and, furthermore, the maternal figure was made to symbolize the newly built dictatorial Spain.
It is our contention, though, that the different representations of the mother in Spanish cinema offer more multilayered readings. During Spain's democratic process, in fact, the maternal has acted as a fictional space which has articulated historical-political conflicts. As a result, maternal characters most of the time have been either instrumentalized, simplified, and/or silenced. Needless to say, mothers have appeared not only in films of the transition or the films discussed below. For methodologi...See the full content of this document
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