Abstract
‘?Por que hay tantas rejas? Todas esas casas parecen jaulas.’ [Why are there so many bars? All these houses look like cages]. Hernan Jimenez’s central character, Antonio, poses this question in the national box-office hit, El regreso [The Return] (2011), upon returning to his hometown of San Jose, Costa Rica, after a decade living in New York. The home as an imprisoning space which mirrors what Jimenez sees as the oppressive atmosphere of the nation’s capital is a recurring theme in his work and this article therefore considers the domestic space as a place of fear and unease rather than comfort and rest, analysing the role of security, family, and home in Costa Rica. These reflections are explored with reference to three of Jimenez’s cinematic works: the documentary Doble llave y cadena [Double Lock and Chain] (2005), and the two feature-length fiction films A ojos cerrados [Closed Eyes] (2009) and El regreso (2011), which are analysed according to Homi K. Bhabha and Dwayne Avery’s conceptions of the unhomely home.
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