Latin American Cinemas: Local Views and Transnational Connections (review)

Interest in film studies has been on the rise over the last two decade for critics and scholars alike. Whether in the classroom or as the primary focus of research, films offer an effective way to connect with the world outside our own and with topics often studied in literary texts. While Latin American cinema has been a popular subject, Nayibe Bermudez Barrios in Latin American Cinemas: Local Views and Transnational Connections compiles a collection of essays that offers an intellectually stimulating study of those less studied, and some fairly recent, films. Her book is arranged in three parts. Part one titled "Crisis of the Nation-State and Desire for Community" captures the directors' interest in exploring the breakdown of the state, community, and our established ideal of the family unit. In this part, films such as Luna de Avellaneda, and La ciénaga, with the backdrop of citizenship and the state's responsibility for the crisis of capitalism, emphasizes the community, and solidarity in light of economic crisis. While many of the films signal the importance of human engagement, the selection of Brazilian films studied in the article "Films by day and films by night in São Paulo" critiques the often romanticized view of urban life as a place of conflict and corruption. More importantly, films such as O Invasor, point to the dangers of losing our humanity when people begin to look out only for themselves.

Many of the essays in this collection offer the social, political, and cultural contexts of the films, without using restrictive paradigms to allow scholars and critics to see how, for example, feminism or the condition of women improves or deteriorates if we forget to keep evils such as rape a concern that still exists. This is clear in part two of this anthology, titled "Sexuality, Rape and Representation." Intentionally or not, part two is the center and most fluid collection of essays in this anthology. Although focused on the thematic elements of its title, this section shares concerns presented in the first and last section of this book. For example, the article "Bodies so Close, and Yet So Far: Seeing Julián Hernández's El cielo dividido through Gilles Deleuze's Film Theory" shows how the film challenges and questions heterosexual ideas of homosexual desires. The film's use of time-image as understood in Deleuze's theory, allows for memories of past and present experiences to fuse, and inner thoughts and reality to make characters suddenly become passive. It is clear in the analysis of this film, that the desire for a new understanding of community invites us to consider looking outside patriarchal visions of masculinity.

Similarly, in this same section, "Myth and the Monster of Intersex: Narrative Strategies of Otherness in Lucía Puenzo's XXY" shows an interest in Latin American cinema to explore the theme of sexual diversity. This article makes clear how the film negotiates between several dichotomies—national (Argentina) and foreigner (Uruguay) identity, humanity and nature (specifically, the sea), traditional female and male roles, myths and truths—making this film rich in themes to analyze. Here again, we are presented with a new "normal" that challenges our understanding of male and female roles. Moreover, the films and article demonstrate the damaging effect of strict cultural and social structures and the fascination, to the point of fetishism, of the medical professions to normalize bodies. The last article in this section takes us to several decades of Mexican cinema and their representation of rape. While the first two movies in this study, Doña Barbara and La negra Angustias (both made in the 1940s), link rape to national identities and nation-building, movies such as Perfume de Violetas: Nadie te oye and Sin dejar huella (both from 2000), challenge feminist thought and women's complacency with sexual brutality by ignoring victims or blaming them for their own rape. Both movies, especially the latter one, bring up the current condition of women and the...