Queer Affects in the Wandering Films of Antonio Hens

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of queer affects as they manifest in the films Clandestinos (2007) and La partida (2013), directed by the Spanish filmmaker Antonio Hens. Our exploration situates these films within a complex transnational framework, a context that not only shapes Hens’s authorial poetics, driven by the imperatives of production within his own film company but also exerts a profound influence on the subjectivity of the queer adolescent characters, a distinctive recurring compositional element throughout Hens’s oeuvre. Both films abound with thematic elements revolving around nomadic subjective experiences, encompassing themes of displacement, deterritorialization, spatial disjunctions, national estrangement, and an enduring yearning for alternative geographical contexts. Hens’s cinematic techniques amplify a pronounced sense of wandering nomadism and queer itinerancy. Within the scope of this article, we embark on an exploration of nuanced representations of queer subjects and their intimate or romantic relationships in various geographic settings. This analysis employs critical paradigms linked to the concepts of homonationalism, queer migration, and emotional intelligibility. Hens’s ‘wandering films’ adroitly utilize male characters who traverse intricate geographic landscapes. These are youthful and sexually fluid figures navigating a complex web of intimate and public urban spaces consistently tethered to notions of national identity. Consequently, these films identify the convergence of corporeal experiences and geographic environments as the locus where ineffable queer affective experiences manifest.