The Politics of Age and Disability in Contemporary Spanish Film: Plus Ultra Pluralism by Matthew J. Marr (review)

In the last four decades, since post-Franco Spain’s transition to democracy, a lively public debate has taken place about pluralism and inclusiveness in the national imaginary. This discussion touches on many issues in contemporary Spanish politics, from the status of Spain’s autonomous regions to the nation’s global fame as one of the first countries in the world (after only the Netherlands and Belgium) to legalize same-sex marriage. Yet, as Matthew J. Marr notes in his groundbreaking study The Politics of Age and Disability in Contemporary Spanish Film: Plus Ultra Pluralism, questions of age and disability have largely gone unaddressed in the national conversation about diversity – even despite a wide range of cultural representations dealing with age and disability. As a result, Marr’s book addresses urgent questions for scholars of Spanish cultural studies and offers age and disability scholars a new body of texts to examine.

The book consists of a brief introduction, six chapters, and an afterword. The introduction contextualizes Marr’s study within the field of contemporary Spanish cultural studies and explores some links among filmic representations of adolescence, old age, and disability. The chapters are divided into three sections, titled “Adolescence and Alterity,” “Senescence and Subjectivity,” and “Discourses of Disability.” In the first section, Chapter One looks at the character Laura from Salvador García Ruiz’s 1998 Mensaka, Páginas de una historia to reframe the child monster trope in the context of what Marr calls “angry girl” (16) feminism. In this same section, Chapter Two focuses on the depiction of male friendship in Achero Mañas’s El Bola (2000) to address its “socially expressive and emotionally sensitive model of adolescent masculinity” (34). Beginning the second section, Chapter Three looks at La Cuadrilla’s Justino, un asesino de la tercera edad (1994) to argue that its retiree serial killer protagonist resists senior-citizen marginalization. Chapter Four continues this section with a focus on the groundbreaking representation of senescent sexuality in Marcos Carnevale’s 2004 Elsa y Fred. Opening the final section, Chapter Five demonstrates that attention to mental illness in Alejandro Amenábar’s Mar adentro (2004) challenges what critics have seen as the film’s transparent embrace of the Right to Die with Dignity Movement. Chapter Six explores how Pedro Almodóvar’s 2009 Los abrazos rotos “optimizes blindness, at the level of both form and discourse, in fashioning an overarching vision of filmmaking itself as an emblematically collaborative enterprise” (122). Finally, the afterword suggests how issues raised in the book might be further developed in studies of spectatorship, production, and performance.

Marr presents fresh interpretations that shed new light on well-known works, offering insights for seasoned scholars of Spanish cultural studies, disability studies, and/or studies of aging, as well as an accessible entry point for non-specialists. The book will be a crucial source for future studies of the six films analyzed, and the individual chapters will also be useful for graduate and advanced undergraduate seminars on Spanish film and disability studies. For instance, Marr’s analysis of Amenábar’s Mar adentro departs from existing scholarship on the film. Departing from the way scholars who have written on the film (including this reviewer) have thus far interpreted its portrayal of physical disability, Marr convincingly demonstrates that the film engages with psychiatric disability (specifically, manic depression) in ways that complicate its apparently pro-euthanasia stance. Additional highlights include the attention to boyhood and alternative representations of masculinity in Chapter Three, along with Chapter Five’s analysis of the intersections of old age, gender norms, and sexuality in Carnevale’s Elsa y Fred.

Marr’s discussion of Almodóvar’s Los abrazos rotos is particularly compelling, as it reframes the critical reception of a canonized director. Here Marr brilliantly demonstrates how blindness is inscribed not only in the content of Almodóvar’s film but also in its form. With its attention to...