Masochistic Nationalism and the Basque Imaginary

This chapter investigates the curious absence of erotic content in Basque cinema (Julio Medem’s feature films are the obvious exception), an absence that, the author argues, extends well into the democratic period and therefore cannot be blamed on censorship or catholic repression. This research shows that the explicit content of Basque films often revolves around contexts of torture, revealing a certain fascination with masochist narratives that could be suggestive of nationalist martyrdom. This is explored in his Deleuzian analysis of his two main case studies, Estado de excepción/State of Emergency (dir. Iñaki Núñez, 1977) and Akelarre/Witches’ Sabbath (dir. Pedro Olea, 1984), and of a segment of Medem’s documentary La pelota vasca: la piel contra la piedra/The Basque Ball: Skin Against Stone (2003) among many other examples throughout the history of Basque cinema. This noticeable absence of erotic narratives could be part of a revolutionary intent to distance Basque cinema both from the erotic narratives of the Barcelona School and from the destape films associated with Madrid, but also a nationalist commitment to sacrifice individualistic desires and pleasures at the service of more collective aims.

Undressing Opus Dei: Reframing the Political Currency of Destape Films

This chapter offers a revealing analysis of the Opus Dei in the following 1970s Spanish films: Grau’s La trastienda/The Backroom (1976), Yagüe’s Cara al sol que más calienta/Facing the Warmest Sun (1977), and Berlanga’s La escopeta nacional/The National Shutgun (1978). The chapter demonstrates the political value of these films in their different approaches to the depiction of the secretive religious organisation. In La trastienda, for example, the casting of Czech-born actor Frederick Stafford helps associate the Opus Dei elites with modern European democracies. The other two films offer more direct criticisms of the organisation, exposing the perverse effects of the sexual repression that it fosters.

Introduction: One Hundred Years of Sex

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the periods, genres and key theoretical issues discussed in the book, paying special attention to the political importance of the destape films of the 1970s and the films of the transition more widely. The chapter provides a close analysis of two important erotic comedies. These are used as illustrative examples of the issues discussed throughout the book and of the evolution of eroticism in Spanish cinema since the abolition of censorship until now: Juan Bosch’s Cuarenta años sin sexo/Forty years without sex (1978) and the recent Kiki, el amor se hace/Quickie, Love is So (2016), directed by Paco León.

Erotohistoriography, Temporal Drag and the Interstitial Spaces of Childhood in Spanish Cinema

This chapter studies the child figure as ‘the conduit for the exploration of the trauma and loss of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath of dictatorship in Spain’ in well-known films including El espíritu de la colmena/The Spirit of the Beehive (dir. Víctor Erice, 1973), Cría cuervos/Raise Ravens (dir. Carlos Saura, 1976), Secretos del corazón/Secrets of the Heart (dir. Montxo Armendáriz, 1997) and Pa negre/Black Bread (dir. Agustí Villalonga, 2010). In an analysis informed by queer theory, and in particular by Lee Edelman’s concept of reproductive futurism and Elizabeth Freeman’s erotohistoriography, the chapter focuses on sequences of intense intimacy (between mother and child, for example), transgressive kids’ games, and some traumatic events witnessed by children to explore the potential of the child figure as the key to queer the films’ version of history.

The Male Body in the Spanish Erotic Films of the 1980s

This chapter studies the performances of Tony Fuentes in two popular destape films: Deseo carnal/Desire of the Flesh aka Carnal Desire (dir. Manuel Iglesias, 1978) and Jóvenes viciosas/Dirty Young Ladies (dir. Manuel Iglesias, 1980), as well as the evolution of Fuentes’ star persona. The analysis reveals both how the films projected onto the actor’s body stage some of the social anxieties of the time, and how, in turn, these and other historical traces are carried forward into his roles in other films.

Middlebrow Erotic: Didactic Cinema in the Transition to Democracy

This chapter explores what the author calls ‘the middlebrow erotic’ in Spanish cinema. It argues that after the abolition of censorship in 1977, eroticism in Spanish film ‘extended beyond subject matter and became the very grammar by which a new film language was constructed’. In turn, that new language was used to express the new freedoms afforded by democracy. The author illustrates this theory with a fresh reading of an important film of this period, Eloy de la Iglesia’s El diputado/Confessions of a Congressman (1978), demonstrating how the erotic is used to didactically explain previously forbidden political and sexual tendencies and, indeed, how these go hand in hand with each other.

The Desarrollismo Years: The Failures of Sexualised Nationhood in 1960s Spain

This chapter explores the transformative power of newly introduced neoliberal economic policies in 1960s Spain. Focusing on films including Jaime Camino’s Los felices sesenta/The Happy Sixties and Jorge Grau’s Noche de verano/Summer Night, the chapter teases out the tensions that the films establish between the allure of capitalism, consumerism or the potential for social upward mobility on the one hand, and erotic frustration on the other. Moreover, while the films suggest a certain sexual liberalisation both of the characters and 1960s Spanish cinema and Spanish society more widely, they also commodify bodies. In the new neoliberal regime, bodies become consumers as well as consumer objects.

The Colour of Kisses: Eroticism and Exoticism in Spanish Film Culture of the 1920s and ’30s

This chapter explores the erotic allure of the kiss in 1920s Spanish films, paying special attention to discussions about the cinematic kiss in the Spanish specialised press at the time. It reveals an obsessive fascination with the technological mediation of the Hollywood kiss on the one hand, and, on the other, a highly racialised discourse about Japan’s prohibition on kissing, used by the Spanish printed media to present a comparatively modern image of 1920s Spain.

Sex After Fifty: The ‘Invisible’ Female Ageing Body in Spanish Women-authored Cinema

This chapter discusses the figure of the ageing female character as a sexual being in a wide selection of films directed by Spanish women filmmakers including Cecilia Bartolomé, Isabel Coixet, Pilar Miró, Josefina Molina or Paula Ortíz among others. The author usefully identifies a number of sometimes opposing strategies that serve to organise the films into three distinctive categories. Some films actively spectacularise the body of the mature and sexually active woman, others do the opposite and use the portrayal of the unglamorous older female body as a means to draw attention to and denounce the expectations set by the youth-obsessed mainstream film and media that displace mature women making them invisible. Finally, the chapter identifies a third group of films with ‘affirmative ageing’ discourses. This latter group of films actively encourage the spectator’s sensual engagement with the erotic experiences of the older women on the screen.

Sonorous Flesh: The Visual and Aural Erotics of Skin in Eloy de la Iglesia’s Quinqui Films

This chapter is a study of the erotic content of Eloy de la Iglesia’s quinqui films. Informed by senses-receptor-based film theories, the author reflects on the importance of the visual erotics of touch and skin, using the body of de la Iglesia’s actor fetiche José Luis Manzano as a productive and very fitting case study. The chapter proposes that the aesthetic roughness, the post-synch sound, and the delinquent narratives characteristic of this type of film, make it ideal to illustrate the kind of visual immediacy that sensually engages the viewer with the image on the screen. Manzano’s skin is often shown in close-up, pierced and tattooed. Through his work in de la Iglesia’s quinqui films, the actor became iconic of a genre fascinated with ‘the fragile glamour of male youth’ as a memorable example of what the press at the time referred to as the ‘estética de calzoncillo’,