Spaces of Sincerity and Deception: The Representation of Desire in Cesc Gay's En la Ciudad and Ficción

Abstract

This article uses comic theory in order to explore the intersection between romantic and Aristotelian comedy in the films En la ciudad (2003) and Ficción (2006). The films, which construct their characters' identities almost exclusively through discourses of intimacy, love, and desire, use comic conventions in order to articulate two narrative spaces: the space of deception and the space of sincerity. These two spaces, which are superimposed on the 'real' spaces of the city of Barcelona and the Catalonian Pyrenees, and the purely cinematic spaces created through mise en scène, framing and other formal devices, represent two contradictory options in the handling of intimate protocols. In the space of sincerity, associated with the genre of romantic comedy, the characters open themselves to the power of their desires; in the space of deception, characteristic of Aristotelian comedy, they hide their feelings from each other and from themselves for the sake of social propriety and responsibility. As a result of this double approach, the films reflect a contemporary Spanish society in which the reality of the proliferation of choices in the sexual realm clashes with the weight of still powerful traditional models of relationships.