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Wholly ambivalent demon-girl: horror, the uncanny and the representation of feminine adolescence in Lucrecia Martel's La niña santa

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14701847.2011.589213

1470-1847

Deborah Martin,

Latin American Literature Studies

Abstract This article develops existing critical perspectives on Lucrecia Martel's La niña santa, in the light of recent theoretical debates on childhood and cinema. In particular, it focuses on the film's evocation of childhood experience, especially the portrayal and evocation of feminine adolescence, which can be understood within the framework of (feminist engagements with) the Freudian uncanny. This film can be seen as engaging in a dialogue with horror and its hegemonic uses of the child- or adolescent girl-figure, as well as refusing the allegorical uses of the child common to Latin American cultural production. The article redresses a critical 'blind spot' around queer understandings of the film which complement a focus on surface both evocative of childhood experience and negatory of futurity and representation. Keywords: feminine adolescenceuncannymother-daughter relationshiprepresentationqueersenses Notes 1. This special issue followed a 2004 Screen Studies conference on the same theme. 2. See, for example, Ranghelli (1998 Ranghelli, D. 1998. Las niñas en el cine latinoamericano: Cuatro historias. Kinetoscopio, 48(9): 3–6. [Google Scholar]) and Shaw (2003 Shaw, D. 2003. Contemporary Cinema of Latin America: Ten Key Films, New York: Continuum. [Google Scholar]). Critics of Latin American film may produce readings which centre around the child's narrative importance as the allegorical repository of national identity or destiny: Ranghelli focuses on films which take young girls as their subject, and the girl-child's prostitution. Iracema (dir. Jorge Bodansky, 1976), for example, allegorizes 'el uso que se ha hecho de Brasil y de su gente' (Ranghelli 1998 Ranghelli, D. 1998. Las niñas en el cine latinoamericano: Cuatro historias. Kinetoscopio, 48(9): 3–6. [Google Scholar], p. 5). Shaw also sees the child as repository of national pessimism or optimism, when considering Héctor Babenco's Pixote (1981) and Walter Salles' Central Station (1999). In these films, she argues, children represent opposing national visions: corruption, immorality and hopelessness in the former, versus spiritual and moral redemption, and a sense of national renewal, in the latter (2003, p. 142). Although these films deal with realities very different from that depicted in the film I will be discussing (they are Brazilian and deal with street children), the national allegory continues to be present in recent Argentine film, for example in the figures of adolescent girls Lala (Inés Efrón) and la Guayi (Mariela Vitale) in Lucía Puenzo's El niño pez (2009). 3. This new theoretical concern was proposed by Annette Kuhn in her talk 'Cinematic experience, film space, and the child's world', 21 January 2010, Queen Mary, University of London. See also Lury (2010 Lury, K. 2010. Children in an open world: Mobility as ontology in new Iranian and Turkish Cinema. Feminist Theory, 11(3): 283–294. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Wilson (2005 Wilson, E. 2005. Children, emotion and viewing in contemporary European film. Screen, 46(3): 329–340. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 4. Martel's interest in horror, ghosts and the uncanny is much more strongly developed in her more recent film, La mujer sin cabeza (2008), in which the presence of actual ghosts is continually evoked. 5. See, for example, Ríos (2008 Ríos, H. 2008. La poética de los sentidos en los filmes de Lucrecia Martel. Atenea, 28(2): 9–22. [Google Scholar]), who shows how the film de-centralizes optical visuality, Russell (2008 Russell, D. 2008. Lucrecia Martel: A decidedly polyphonic cinema. Jump Cut, [online], no. 50. Available from: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc50.2008/LMartelAudio/index.html [Accessed 12 February 2008] [Google Scholar]), who provides an in-depth study of the film's sound design, and Jones (2005 Jones, K. 2005. In the thick of it. Film Comment, : 22–24. [Google Scholar]), who describes the film's various strategies of spatial dislocation. 6. See Rapfogel (2004 Rapfogel, J. (2004) 'Minimalism and maximalism', Senses of Cinema [online], vol. 34. Available from: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/festivals/05/34/new_york2004.html [Accessed 16 June 2011] [Google Scholar]). 7. In recent years, scholars in the newly forming discipline of girls' studies such as Catherine Driscoll (2002 Driscoll, C. 2002. Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]) and Anita Harris (2004 Harris, A. 2004. Future Girl: Young Women in the 21st Century, New York: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) have focused theoretical attention on the experience and construction of the female child and adolescent. 8. Like photography, film 'undermine[s] the unique identity of objects and people, endlessly reproducing the appearances of objects, creating a parallel world of phantasmatic doubles' (Gunning 1995 Gunning, T. 1995. "Phantom images and modern manifestations: Spirit photography, magic theatre, trick films, and photography's uncanny". In Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video, Edited by: Petro, P. 42–71. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 42–43). 9. Martel has commented in interview that 'it's a public space that also reproduces the private space of the home' (James 2005 James, N. 2005. Carnal knowledge. Sight and Sound, 15(2): 19–20. [Google Scholar], p. 19). The hotel is contrasted in the film with the 'proper home' of Josefina, a distinction which Josefina's moralising mother doesn't tire of reinforcing. However, the film itself makes a mockery of such distinctions: though not graphically shown, the bed of Josefina's grandmother is the site for the suggestion of incest and anal sex. 10. Martel's cuts cannot properly be called 'shock cuts' as defined by Diffrient (2004 Diffrient, D.S. 2004. "A film is being beaten: Notes on the shock cut and the material violence of horror". In Horror Film: Creating and Marketing Fear, Edited by: Hantke, S. 52–81. Jackson: University of Mississippi. [Google Scholar], pp. 54–55), though they do share some of their features. 11. Diffrient uses these terms to describe a shock cut in David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997), pointing out that 'capable of italicizing graphic contrasts, shock cuts may clamp together two distinct media or technologies' (2004, p. 55). 12. Whom Amalia addresses as 'Jose', and who shares a name with the oppressive, homophobic mother in Martel's later film, La mujer sin cabeza (2008). 13. See Wood (2002 Wood, R. 2002. "The American nightmare: Horror in the 70s". In Horror: The Film Reader, Edited by: Jancovich, M. 25–29. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], p. 29). Examples include Rosemary's Baby (dir. Roman Polansky, 1968), The Shining (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980), and The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin, 1973). 14. Carol Clover's (1992 Clover, C. 1992. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]) name for the plucky girl with whom the audience is often made to identify in slasher films. 15. Whilst Wood's schema is historically and culturally specific to 1970s North American horror (including some social and political 'threats' to the status quo which are not applicable in the same way elsewhere), the categories mentioned here are arguably universal (in their otherness) and certainly applicable to this context. 16. See, for example, Terry Castle (1993 Castle, T. 1993. The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]). Royle points to '[t]he shared, secret history of the uncanny and the queer' and lists others who have theorised such a link (2003, p. 43). 17. Interestingly, whilst other critics see Amalia as the agent of a subversive masquerade, inherently ambivalent, Aguilar sees her as one of only two characters (the other is Dr Vesalio) who exhibit no ambivalence at all (2006, p. 99). 18. Thanks to Montserrat Lunati for this observation on the occasion of my giving an earlier version of this paper to the Institute for Visual Culture, Cardiff University, 27 November 2009. 19. Jay Telotte discusses how horror reverses the 'normal' sequence of shots used by cinema, by 'offering the reaction shot first and thus fostering a chilling suspense by holding the terrors in abeyance for a moment' (1984 Telotte, J.P. 1984. "Faith and idolatry in the horror film". In Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, Edited by: Grant, B.K. 21–37. Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 25–26). 20. Sleeping and waking is a recurrent theme in the film, and the beds of various characters provide the backdrop to many scenes. 21. Classical allusions in the names of the characters have not gone unnoticed by critics. See Forcinito (2006 Forcinito, A. 2006. Mirada cinematográfica y género sexual: Mímica, erotismo y ambigüedad en Lucrecia Martel. Chasqui, 35(2): 109–130. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 120), and Aguilar (2006 Aguilar, G. 2006. Otros mundos: Un ensayo sobre el nuevo cine argentino, Buenos Aires: Santiago Arcos Editor. [Google Scholar], p. 94). 'Amalia', of course, recalls José Mármol's foundational novel of the same name, a name which 'bears some resemblance to Argentina's' (Sommer 1991 Sommer, D. 1991. Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], p. 102). 22. Thanks to Joanna Evans Evans, J. 2011. "Almodóvar's "others": Spanish women film-makers, masquerade, and maternity". In Companion to Spanish Women's Studies, Edited by: de Ros, X. and Coates, G. 329–342. London: Tamesis. [Google Scholar] for instructive discussion of Kristeva's analysis of the myth of Iõ. In her discussion of Spanish women filmmakers, Evans suggests that a Kristevan re-thinking of desire in (feminine) narrative is applicable to Spanish women filmmakers, whose 'performance […] in an industry dominated by oedipal narratives is marked more profoundly by the myth of mobile Iõ than by Oedipus's compulsive returns' (2011, p. 330). 23. The most famous example, even blueprint, is Luis Puenzo's La historia oficial (1985), in which the little girl, Gaby, is central to the narrative, as her adoptive mother Alicia comes to realise that Gaby was 'illegally adopted' (taken from a subversive woman who gave birth in captivity) under the auspices of military rule, and that Alicia's husband was involved. A more recent example is Marcelo Piñeyro's Kamchatka (2002), which is told from the point of view of a child-protagonist who struggles to understand the changes to his family's life brought about by political persecution. 24. This was a question posed by Annette Kuhn in her talk 'Cinematic experience, film space, and the child's world', of which there are details in note 3. 25. Emily Tomlinson posits the spectral child as symbol of the 'after-life of brutality', and image of the desaparecido (2004 Tomlinson, E. 2004. Mapping the land of "I-don't remember": For a re-evaluation of La historia oficial. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 81(2): 215–228. [Google Scholar], pp. 217 and 219). 26. The use of 'Amalia' with its national overtones (see note 21) is another example of a suggestion of allegory which, on closer inspection, is not in fact embedded within an allegorical structure.