Introduction

Abstract

This chapter considers the subject of this book: the work of a contemporary Spanish film director, Daniel Calparsoro, in auteurist terms. This study of Calparsoro discusses not only Calparsoro's films but also the Spanish cinema of today and the ways in which it is studied, written about and presented. It aims to make explicit some of the ways in which certain films and production processes are implicitly deemed more desirable, more worthy of attention by academics, critics and audiences. It offers an overall presentation of Calparsoro and his total corpus of work to date in relation to trends and traditions within Spanish cinema, serving to problematise these. Thus Calparsoro is discussed against the background of specific developments in Spanish cinema since 1995, how both the film industry and critics perceived these developments, and how perceptions changed after Spanish cinema arguably fell into crisis from 2002. Calparsoro's style makes the critics uncomfortable, suggesting that, regardless of his own putative roots in an earlier Spanish cinema, his deviation from the increasing convergence of Spanish cine social and slick commercialism has irritated the critics, indicating in turn that their expectations, if not his, have changed.