Sentimental Objects: Nostalgia and the Child in Cinema of the Spanish Memory Boom

Sarah Thomas

doi:10.18192/rceh.v42i1.2005

Abstract

This article explores how two films from the so-called Spanish “memory boom” represent their child protagonists via a certain “anxiety of influence” in relation to their cinematic forebear El espíritu de la colmena (Erice, 1973 ). It argues that, despite their intertextual connection, these two more recent films differ from Erice’s in terms of their representation of childhood, making use of the child as an instrument of didacticism and nostalgia. In so doing, they offer an image of the child instrumentalized as object, rather than fully realized as subject.

Highlights

Palabras claves: el niño en el cine, el “boom” de la memoria, nostalgia, cine histórico, guerra civil española
Given the seemingly ubiquitous presence of child characters in films set during Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and ensuing Franco dictatorship (1939-1975), it is not remotely surprising that in recent years the child has become something of a “hot topic” in Spanish cultural and film studies
Frequently examined alongside other films by key directors of the New Spanish Cinema such as José Luis Borau or Carlos Saura who came of age under the dictatorship, more than any other film from the period, El espíritu de la colmena seems to haunt subsequent childcentered films that approach Spain’s turbulent political past

Summary

SARAH THOMAS

Sentimental Objects: Nostalgia and the Child in Cinema of the Spanish Memory Boom. El presente artículo indaga en cómo dos películas del llamado “boom de la memoria histórica” española representan a sus protagonistas infantiles partiendo de cierta “ansiedad de influencia” relacionada con la película antecesora El espíritu de la colmena (Erice, 1973). This divide exists to a certain extent between 1970s auteur cinema and 1990s/2000s mass-market historical cinema more broadly, but for the purposes of the present analysis I am especially interested in the contrasts between child-protagonized films from both periods, especially as concerns a recurring theme in criticism: what we might call an “anxiety of influence” wielded by El espíritu de la colmena over subsequent films, in this case José Luis Cuerda’s 1999 La lengua de las mariposas and Imanol Uribe’s 2002 El viaje de Carol.4 This manifests in a general critical consensus that these two key films of the Memory Boom are poor sentimental imitations of the influential earlier child-focused films made under the dictatorship or in its immediate aftermath, which in contrast tend to be opaque, slow, non-linear, metaphorical, allegorical, and generally more “difficult” than their later counterparts.. These two films offer an image of the child instrumentalized as object rather than invested with autonomy as subject, resulting in a more surface-level engagement with both history and childhood

THE INTERTEXTUAL CHILD

THE INSTRUMENTAL CHILD

THE LEGIBLE CHILD

WORKS CITED