Penélope Cruz 9781838710859, 9781844574285

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following for their help: Martin Shingler, who encouraged me in this project; Melanie Bell; Katherine Farrimond, for drawing my attention to the Racialicious blog mentioned in Chapter 3; Chris Perriam, who allowed me to see a draft of his work on Vicky Cristina Barcelona; Rebecca Naughten, with whom it was a pleasure to discuss Cruz as part of her own doctoral study on Spanish stars; Núria Triana-Toribio, for loaning me press clippings on Cruz; Jeanne Davies, who sent me cuttings concerning Almodóvar’s recent films; and Rosie White, for letting me borrow copies of Vanity Fair. I would also like to thank the various colleagues and friends who listened as I talked over the difficulties of researching a star like Cruz. In addition, I wish to thank Sophie Contento and Joy Tucker for their help in producing the final version of this book. I would like to dedicate this book to the students at Newcastle University with whom I have studied Jamón jamón and Abre los ojos over the years. For me, studying the films with these students, including Cruz’s role within the films, has always been a pleasure: I hope and trust that they feel the same.

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INTRODUCTION

Penélope Cruz forms part of a notable influx of actors and stars from non-anglophone countries into the Hollywood film industry over the last two decades. Of this group, she is by far the most prominent actress and star of Hispanic origin. The word ‘Hispanic’ to describe her nonetheless encompasses some of the ambiguities of her star persona. ‘Hispanic’ can be used quite simply as a label for Spanishspeaking countries and cultures, one of which is Spain itself, Cruz’s home country. The last two decades have consolidated her position as the leading actress in Spain, often known in the Spanish press as ‘nuestra Penélope’ or ‘our Penélope’, suggesting both a national pride in one of Spain’s most successful and most international stars and a sense of Cruz as ultimately and inherently Spanish. This alone could justify a book-length study dedicated to her; but her resonance as star beyond Spain brings out other, on occasion potentially troubling, meanings to the term ‘Hispanic’. For sometimes, and particularly in the USA as we shall see later on in this study, the specificity of Spanish nationality is elided into an idea of a wider Hispanic identity bound up with tension over immigration to the USA and the increasingly visible presence of a Hispanic population in that country. Cruz as a Spanish national theoretically has nothing to do with this but she, like many other Spanish actors, has often been called on to play Hispanic or Latino roles – for instance, a Mexican bandit (Bandidas, 2006), a Columbian femme fatale who

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mixes with drug barons (Blow, 2001), a Brazilian cook (Woman on Top, 2000) or a Cuban student (Elegy, 2008). Playing such roles has clearly facilitated Cruz’s entry into Hollywood cinema and has been crucial in making her the international star she is today, but the roles have also made her somewhat prone to reductive casting as a fiery exotic Other, the stereotypical dusky woman who promises emotional and sexual passion with often an implicit contrast to the cool purity of white women. A study of Cruz therefore reveals tensions in interpretation of a star persona that depends on whether the star is positioned at home or abroad: it also suggests that while there is an increasing internationalisation of the roster of Hollywood stars the star personae of these actors can take on a crudely national or racial tone. Thus, even this early in Cruz’s career, her case repays attention. Cruz also raises the question not only of what makes an A-list Hollywood star, but also the division between mainstream and independent film-making and the tendency to conflate European cinema with the latter, with implications for the persona of a star coming from the European industry. Within Spain, her status as preeminent actress is currently beyond dispute. Her status within Hollywood is more open to question. When Cruz was cast in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), James White, in Empire, suggested that Cruz was ‘a surprising bit of casting info, given that you wouldn’t normally expect to see Cruz cropping up in such a hefty tentpole’, pointing out that many of her forays into Hollywood have not been that successful. White continues, however, by saying that Cruz ‘doesn’t always swim in indie waters’ (White, 2010). This item of casting news implies a great deal about Cruz’s standing – not quite A-list, without guaranteed box-office success and a hint of indie cinema about her which could derive as much from her work in the Spanish and European film industry as from any work with American independent directors. Such a background does not, according to White, make her an obvious choice for a leading role in such a successful series as the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Yet

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clearly Cruz is not confined to an indie/arthouse star category and is known for her work further afield. At whatever level we wish to pitch it, Cruz is undoubtedly an actor with wide recognition, receiving her own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in 2011, winning awards from many countries including an Oscar (for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, 2008) and participating in ad campaigns at home and abroad (most notably for L’Oréal and Ralph Lauren), such campaigns forming an intricate relationship in which the ads promote the stars but the stars need to be recognisable enough to promote the product, offering that extra celebrity endorsement. Cruz has also made headlines because of her personal life. In this sense, she came to international prominence after being romantically linked to the US actor Tom Cruise at about the time of his divorce from the Australian actress Nicole Kidman: indeed, some attributed to Cruz a catalytic role in breaking up the Cruise–Kidman marriage, thus contributing for a while to a negative view of her. The contrast between the blonde Kidman and the dark hair of Cruz allowed the latter to be perceived as an exotic and sultry temptress, playing into ideas of the racial Other as well as ‘the other woman’ and the femme fatale, an image that, as we shall see in the next chapter, went against the grain of Cruz’s persona in Spain as the good girl and suggesting the shifts in star persona that can transpire with a move from one national context to another. Cruz and Cruise appeared together in the film Vanilla Sky (2001), which will form part of the discussion in Chapter 3. Cruz subsequently became involved with another American actor, Matthew McConaughey, when the two starred in the action adventure film Sahara (2005). McConaughey appeared by Cruz’s side when she was photographed at the opening of the film Volver (2006), but by the end of 2007 the Spanish press were already talking about her relationship with another actor, this time Spanish: Javier Bardem, with whom she had made her cinema debut in 1992 in the film Jamón jamón (1992). At about the time the two actors were making the Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina

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Barcelona (released in 2008, which I will discuss in Chapter 3), rumours were beginning to circulate that they had formed a romantic attachment, which were confirmed when photos were taken of them together on holiday (and which were sold for several thousand euros). The Spanish press reported unkind comments from Hollywood commentators that Cruz was always going out with her co-stars (Galaz, 2007), but this time the relationship had more substance, Cruz and Bardem eventually marrying in 2010; and subsequently the couple have had two children, a son called Leo and a daughter called Luna. It is as if, after dallying with Hollywood professionally and personally, Cruz’s personal life improved when she returned home to Spain, at a time when, as we shall see in future chapters, her stock as an actor had risen by performing in the films of two highly respected directors who could combine arthouse with commercial success: Almodóvar and Allen. Ever since her incursion into Hollywood, however, Cruz would be accompanied by rumours of her romantic involvement with a succession of actors with whom she starred, such as Matt Damon and Nicolas Cage, and these rumours, whatever their validity, have contributed to her star persona as a desirable but perhaps rather fickle woman that is of a piece with some of the more negative stereotyping of the Latin femme fatale. Cruz’s Hollywood reputation contrasts quite strongly with her origins in the Spanish film industry. Born in 1974, only a year before the end of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco in Spain, Penélope Cruz Sánchez grew up in Spain’s democratic era without the associations with the Francoist past around which Spanish cinema and its participants pivoted prior to 1975. However, her career encompasses films about the Spanish Civil War, the dictatorship and the repression, such as Belle Époque (1992), La niña de tus ojos (The Girl of Your Dreams, 1998) and Entre rojas (literally, Among Red Women, English title – Women in Prison, 1995). Cruz’s characters are always on the side opposing the forces of repression,

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even though their motivation is often love rather than politics. Cruz’s Spanish star persona is apolitical, in strong contrast to that of husband Javier Bardem, who comes from a renowned family of film directors and actors who opposed Franco and who has himself been involved in political protests (see Perriam, 2011, pp. 116–18). Cruz’s apolitical persona is not in itself unusual in either contemporary Spain or Hollywood, but the stress of personal rather than political motivation, and particularly love, is important in a country still uneasily coming to terms with its Francoist past. In Spain, for the most part, Cruz functions as the loving subject rather than desired object, kind-hearted but with a strong streak of self-will and feistiness that translates fairly easily at a later date into the wildness of the exotic femme fatale stereotype, but that at home makes her persona lovable, safe but also lively and active. Rob Stone has argued: ‘With her talent, looks and gutsy femininity, [Cruz] was the closest Spain had ever dreamt of getting to a post-feminist icon’ (Stone, 2002, p. 200). He also describes her as ‘a model of reconciliation between the sexes that fulfilled both genders’ notions of female identity in contemporary Spain’ (p. 201). Cruz’s sparky persona is soothing while not soporific for a culture that has had to tread carefully as it made its way from a right-wing dictatorship to a contemporary democracy that encompassed sweeping social change, including the position of women. Cruz offers no controversy, no risk of disturbance. This persona is different from the stronger tendency in the Hollywood industry to render her as the object of desire – sometimes a bland façade, sometimes fiery and passionate – played by a star who allegedly serially trawled through Hollywood’s most eligible men and broke up at least one celebrity marriage. The links between the two different personae are nonetheless also apparent; and Cruz’s international reputation has managed to incorporate the possibility of being the loving subject as well as the desired object. Cruz’s trajectory within Spanish cinema partly reflects that of the industry of which she forms a part. Spanish cinema in the early

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1990s, when Cruz was starting out, lacked clear direction and purpose, while much of its output was mediocre – only Almodóvar possibly bucking the trend. But in 1992 came two indications that things were about to change; and Cruz participated in both. First, Bigas Luna released Jamón jamón, an irreverent send-up of clichés of Spanishness; second, Fernando Trueba’s Belle Époque, a nostalgic pastoral comedy that looked back at the time before the Spanish Civil War, unexpectedly earned an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Both films gained an international release and proved arthouse successes. Cruz appeared in both, starring in one, and thus she gained rapid exposure worldwide, a remarkable rise given that her career up to this point had consisted of appearances in a Spanish TV show and a pop video (admittedly one by Mecano, a famous and iconic pop trio in Spain; and even here Cruz formed a romantic attachment with one of the group members, commencing her trail of famous boyfriends). The year 1995 would see the Spanish film industry experience a noticeable upsurge of successful film-making, when many new directors and stars appeared on the scene: in addition, the types of films being made began to change from the predominance of overblown literary adaptations and costume dramas of the previous decade that had caused the industry to stagnate, to films aimed more squarely at young adults. These films often had a more globalised commercial feel reminiscent of Hollywood vehicles: comedies might be more localised but nonetheless had the tastes of young adults firmly in mind. Part of this increasing convergence with American cinema is what Chris Perriam describes as the prevalence of marketing and promotion of new stars following the international success of Antonio Banderas (Perriam, 2003, p. 4). The new stars of this era such as Eduardo Noriega, Fele Martínez, Leonor Watling and Paz Vega furthermore reflected the turn towards youth and a move away from the older stars that had been constantly trotted out in Spanish cinema prior to this point. Cruz’s emergence in 1992 pre-dated this upsurge, and this placed

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her very much at the head of the vanguard along with Javier Bardem, who had risen to prominence alongside her (and, indeed, in the same film, Jamón jamón). Cruz was young but was also more established, and therefore had a greater potential for stardom than those who followed. In a dossier on Spanish cinema for the weekly magazine of Spanish daily El País in 1998 Cruz is labelled as a ‘fiera con aspecto de gata’ (a wild animal like a cat), and comments are already being made about her love life, including a move from one boyfriend (Nacho Cano from Mecano) to another (Gigi Sarasola) (‘El nuevo cine español de la A a la Z’, 1998, p. 37). From this we can perceive that the feisty angle of Cruz’s persona had already been noticed, and interest in her personal life was already developing, although the latter would become more noticeable when Cruz became linked with bigger, Hollywood stars. The new upsurge of film-making within Spain peaked in the mid- to late 1990s and played itself out; Spanish cinema is widely thought to have entered a crisis period in 2002. Towards the end of the 90s, however, Cruz’s name began to emerge as not simply a star of Spanish cinema but also an international star no longer tied to Spanish vehicles. This arose in part because of a growth in popularity of Latin culture, particularly music, a greater awareness of Hispanic cultures and the increasing use of Hispanic actors, but partly from a desire to attract Hispanic audiences in the USA. Spanish-speaking actors were increasingly called upon to play a generic Hispanic identity regardless of where they actually came from. During this time Cruz established herself more strongly as an international star, not only in Hollywood but also in Europe, appearing in French and Italian films. She had by this time possibly grown too big for a cinema that was arguably in crisis. Her return ‘home’ to the Spanish industry, after a gap of five years, revolved around her starring roles in the films of Spain’s pre-eminent director Almodóvar: it may also have coincided with the trajectory in her personal life, her romance with and later marriage to Javier Bardem. Nonetheless, she brought a

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more international aura with her: if in Almodóvar’s films she was playing very much as a Spaniard at home, she also perpetuated the image of a more stereotypical hot-tempered Hispanic in Allen’s film. Barry Jordan and Mark Allinson raise the question as to how far a Spanish star system can be said to exist, given there is neither the need to invest in stars nor a need on the part of audiences to have home-grown stars (2005, pp. 121–2). They argue that Spanish stars only become stars through working abroad, because this enables such actors to acquire a wider reach to audiences than Spanish cinema can offer on its own (p. 123). To some extent, of course, the Spanish film industry has always aimed to promote certain homegrown actors as stars, primarily through film magazines such as Radiocinema and Primer plano, with photo spreads of actors on set or at home (particularly during the Franco era and prior to the sustained development of television). This tendency has become more pronounced as new media and increased advertising have offered more possibilities for promotion alongside the films. Certain films or genres of the Franco era could serve as star vehicles, although stars were unlikely to break well beyond the boundaries of the genre with which they were associated (e.g., Imperio Argentina and Carmen Sevilla with folkloric musicals, Alfredo Landa with comedies, Aurora Bautista with historical drama). The rise of oppositional film-making during the dictatorship contributed to the dissolving of ties between stars and genres as actors worked for both established studios and dissident directors (though some actors would come to be identified with the latter). In some ways, the looser link between stars and the established industry that developed during the 1950s and 60s paralleled the break-up of the studio system in Hollywood but for different reasons and with different results. The smaller industry worked against the development of star personae that then resonated in different films, acting and performance were emphasised rather than star glamour, and ties to mainstream discourses were less clear-cut. A few actors continued to create a

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niche for themselves as stars of specific genres (such as child star Marisol for the musical), while only very occasionally a star would create a persona that resonated independently of film roles (in particular Sara Montiel, whose overt sexuality in 1950s Spain made her stand out in an industry forced to downplay ideas that contradicted Catholic family values). The return to democracy saw little change except a certain measure of disconnect between stardom and genre cinema, as democratic government policy stressed highquality film making, costume dramas and literary adaptation, which tended to reinforce the idea of a star as an actor first and foremost, without the attendant persona or glamour that made for star quality. If a Spanish star system can be said to have existed, it was based on different foundations from the American one. Nonetheless, that American system haunted an industry all too aware of the success of Hollywood, which continued to prove far more attractive to Spanish audiences than Spanish films or Spanish talent. Sara Montiel tried her luck in Hollywood (particularly with Robert Aldrich’s Vera Cruz of 1954), and actors such as Fernando Rey (in William Friedkin’s The French Connection of 1971) occasionally played roles, but stardom of the American kind still seemed beyond reach to Spanish actors. However, the mid-1990s upsurge in the industry, combined with a simultaneous rise in interest for Hispanic and Latino cultural products (particularly music), offered new opportunities for work abroad and a consequent rise in profile. Cruz was well placed to benefit from this: she had an edge over other young Spanish actors because of her involvement in two notable Spanish successes that made her more noticeable in the home industry, while her looks fitted neatly and attractively with Hollywood perceptions and requirements of Hispanic and Latino identities. Jordan and Allinson believe that Cruz has managed to break through the barrier blocking Spanish actors from becoming stars and acquire celebrity through her relationship with Tom Cruise, and they observe that ‘this type of stardom for Cruz need not necessarily

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involve any spectatorial interest in her films. Here, “star image” is a function, not of her screen roles and her performances, but of her construction as a celebrity across a vast range of secondary sources’ (2005, p. 125). Colin Vaines, on the other hand, who works with the Weinstein Company, suggests that Cruz is an example of the best pattern for a European star to follow if they are to gain international success: that is, not to abandon one’s roots but to shuttle between Europe and Hollywood (quoted in MacNab, 2007, p. 16). The comments by both Jordan and Allinson and by Vaines emphasise that the formulation of stardom from outside Hollywood is an intricate process in which perceptions of the star’s country of origin must be taken into account, but in which other elements may also pertain, such as celebrity discourse. Yet the films themselves are still crucial, for, despite Jordan and Allinson’s comments, the films Cruz makes still have a great deal to do with the ways in which she is perceived and are the primary, although not the only, occasion for her to be a star. Cruz’s function as a celebrity may or may not be greater than her function as an actor, but this is not a case of ‘famous for being famous’: the films are vital texts for understanding Cruz, although not the only ones. Neither Jordan and Allinson nor Vaines, however, refer to the question of acting and performance, or in other words the extent to which Cruz herself participates in and actively forms her own persona. Yet the contrast in their views suggests one of the many ways in which this persona is one of contradictions. While Jordan and Allinson’s reference to celebrity romance coincides with a notion of Cruz as desired and passive object, an idea we will encounter more than once in this book, Vaines’s view implies Cruz as somebody active in shaping her own career, something that Cruz herself stresses time and again in interviews as she mentions the efforts and hard work that she has expended in her upward star trajectory. This latter perspective suggests that being a star derives from active choice and effort rather than simply being desirable. I am sure none of these

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authors intended such a simplistic contrast, but this contrast can be detected as underlying many of the critiques of Cruz in the media. It arises, for instance, in the matter of her star status: if she has not reached the putative A-list, is this because she has made bad career choices (so she is actively at fault) or because she is just a pretty Latin face where talent is not necessary (being passively pretty is what counts)? The contradictions in Cruz’s persona increase when we compare her general characterisation in her roles as fiery, warmhearted and naturally vivacious, with the very clear control that she – or somebody – is exercising in interviews and other publicity activities. Cruz’s publicity team are invisible yet their work can be seen both in her slick physical appearance and the fact that she takes care to say very little of substance to journalists. The apparent spontaneity of her roles diverges from the tight control exercised by Cruz (and her team) as a star. This contrast is reflected in two others that we will encounter during the course of this book: the dichotomy of subject/object and self/Other. Indeed, these two dichotomies have already been touched on in this introduction. Cruz’s characters may be active subjects who desire rather than being the object of desire: their desires motivate their actions and redeem them from passivity. As active subjects they are positioned to be seen as ‘selves’: the action of the film derives in whole or in part from their point of view. This differs from Cruz’s positioning as ‘Other’, different from ‘us’, that may involve fear or suspicion of a character that is different in terms of gender or race or perhaps both, a position that clearly chimes with the perception of Cruz as exotically fiery. It should be stressed that these two dichotomies are not a simple question of either/or, but a spectrum along which Cruz can be placed differently each time – thus suggesting the complexities of studying a star such as Cruz. In what follows, the emphasis is on how these complexities are elaborated in the films themselves and also the discourse surrounding the films, and the extent to which Cruz is actively or passively contributing in the elaboration. Instead of a focus on

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detailed technicalities of performance, this book considers Cruz as performer to the extent that she actively engages in the process of creating roles and creating a star persona. Rather than following a simple chronological approach, its structure highlights key thematic elements – or indeed difficulties – that arise when considering Cruz as star, although a sense of the development of her persona can be readily perceived from her early films as a young star in Spain, to her incursion into Hollywood, and her return to Spain to work with Almodóvar. The book does not aim to be comprehensive in its treatment of Cruz’s films, but in each chapter I focus on two key films that illustrate the elements I intend to highlight, and thus establish some useful principles or guidelines for examining other films in Cruz’s oeuvre. I begin by considering Cruz’s early years and her function within the Spanish film industry. Within this, Cruz as a fresh face became imbricated with the importance of youth as invigorating an industry that seemed moribund. The note of youth in her persona at this time contributed very much to her sympathetic reception by film critics. As Cruz’s career developed, the idea of youth and lively energy became understandably attenuated, youth being by definition an ultimately ephemeral quality that was likely to evaporate: but its echo can still be perceived with Cruz’s ‘return’ to Spain and the films of Almodóvar, which I shall discuss in my final chapter. Following the discussion of youth, I turn to consider questions of nationality that began to arise as Cruz’s career developed. On the one hand, Cruz was increasingly presented as a symbol of Spain that served to reconcile a nation fractured by the conflicts of the past, a specifically Spanish woman who could be loved by a nation but who also demonstrated how important love can be as a unifying national force. On the other hand, she has been able to derive success from pandering to – and to some extent parodying – foreign stereotypes of Spanishness and thus play Hollywood at its own game of objectifying the Spanish. The focus then moves to the demands on Cruz within Hollywood to play roles that conform to

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wider stereotypes of Latin, Hispanic or Mediterranean identity, as well as to be simply Other. As Cruz begins more and more to look beyond Spain, her roles give a greater stress to her as passively beautiful which would accord well with the rise of her profile outside and beyond the films she was making, offering glamour through advertising and gossip magazines. These demands retain the dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity in that Cruz runs the risk of becoming an exotic object in an exotic country to be admired, desired or feared by others, but also has the opportunity to exploit these stereotypes for her own purposes. The stereotypes also allow the intricate interplay in her persona between the good girl and the femme fatale to be strengthened. The final chapter returns Cruz to Spain to examine her growing professional maturity and the opportunity to be considered as a serious actor rather than simply a good-looking celebrity through her work with Almodóvar. These films also raise further questions concerning the extent to which Cruz actively performs, given not only her relationship with the director, but also the fact that the characters she plays are themselves required to perform and act. I should offer one final note on terminology, concerning the use of the terms ‘actor’ and ‘actress’. The latter term has largely fallen out of favour in film studies, while the word ‘actor’ has come to function as a term in which gender is no longer relevant, applying both to men and women while offering slightly more prestige to the latter. Nonetheless, sometimes meaning is lost when the word ‘actor’ is used when gender is specifically one of the matters in question. I therefore refer to Cruz as an actor generally, when writing of her work and performance, but I use the term ‘actress’ when questions of gender need to be highlighted. In using the latter word I am meaning no disrespect to Cruz, although that might not be the case as regards sources I quote which also use the term.

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1 PERFORMING YOUTH

This chapter looks at Cruz’s early roles, in particular Jamón Jámon and Belle Époque, to demonstrate not only Cruz’s function as a star in embryo, but also how her persona encompasses different aspects of female youth. It contrasts the tensions of young sexuality (Jamón jamón) with the demands of being a good girl (Belle Époque), and argues that in these films Cruz’s persona contains these tensions that arise as a consequence of the demands and expectations placed by different sectors of society on young women both within the films themselves and in the discourse that surrounded Cruz as a young star. The chapter will also consider youth as something that is performed as opposed to a naturally occurring phenomenon. Cruz’s persona – which derived initially from these films – assumed a strong element of appearing natural precisely because Cruz was young and supposedly unformed and inexperienced: the question arises as to whether this derived from her actual self rather than being something assumed, thus in turn raising a question as to how far the persona coincides with the ‘true’ personality and to what extent the former is performed. The two films that form the focus of our discussion in this chapter have been selected because of their fundamental importance in putting Cruz on the cinematic map. We need, nonetheless, to remember that these were two highlights of Cruz’s early career more generally wherein she dedicated herself to playing mostly ingénue

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A young Diana in search of The Beatles in El amor perjudica seriamente la salud (1996)

parts in a series of Spanish comedies. The emphasis on comedy coincides with the idea of exaggerating – and, thus, performing – the exuberance of youth. A good example is the film El amor perjudica seriamente la salud (Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health, 1996), unknown outside Spain. The film centres on the on–off love affair in middle age between Santi (Juanjo Puigcorbé) and Diana (played by older, established Spanish star Ana Belén), but has many flashbacks to the time in the 1960s when the couple first met and fell in love, and Cruz plays the younger Diana in these flashback sequences. There is an association of the young Diana with political and social events of national importance, such as the birth of the son of the future King Juan Carlos, that point forward to the question of national identities that is the focus of the next chapter. But here the emphasis is on Cruz as young, kittenish (the latter characteristic will be maintained by Belén in her own performance), and desirable to a young audience. Her first major sequence, in which she demonstrates an obsession for John Lennon of The Beatles and strips to her underwear in anticipation of seduction by the Beatle in question, associates her with the mad passions of young people, the desirable perfections of a youthful body and past history. There is a strong contrast between the young Diana’s hyperbolic actions in

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pursuit of Lennon, and, following a news announcement of Lennon’s assassination, the mature mourning of the singer by the older Diana, sitting in silence in a bar as The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ is played on a piano. It is the hyperbole that underscores the sense of performance in Cruz’s acting out of youth. Her exaggeration of giddy youth is amusing precisely because it is exaggerated. It is also charming in its cheekiness, as when Diana manages to get access to the hospital room in which Prince Juan Carlos is celebrating the birth of his new son (and heir to the throne). The liveliness, the charm and the cheek are elements of Cruz’s star persona that persist into some of her more mature performances, and thus beyond youth. This does not necessarily make them unnatural but it does suggest they are elements that can be repeated deliberately and, thus, performed. The liveliness of youth, with its occasional extravagances, can be found in Jamón jamón and Belle Époque as well. All three films also take and exploit other characteristics of youth, innocence and inexperience; and again the question arises as to how far this can be said to be deliberately performed. It is worth bearing in mind Cruz’s young age (sixteen) at the time of making Jamón jamón in particular, a film requiring some nudity and fairly lengthy sex scenes. Sources show some ambivalence on Cruz’s part as to this particular role. Javier Ángulo Barturen cites Cruz as claiming that she had previously tested for director Bigas Luna’s film Las edades de Lulú (The Ages of Lulu, 1990) at about fourteen: Lulú was even more sexually explicit than the later Jamón jamón. At that time, according to Ángulo Barturen, Cruz already felt herself to be a woman well past adolescence (Ángulo Barturen, 2007, p. 56): thus, by implication, she could cope with the demands of performing sexuality. This may, of course, be merely naivety on Cruz’s part at this time, but it also suggests that she did not think of herself as an innocent and vulnerable adolescent. It may also coincide with ambition: looking back on Cruz’s early role in the light of her later international

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success, the film’s director Bigas Luna reminisced about a hunger for success that he felt Cruz demonstrated even at this early stage in her career (Marín, 2007). If this was Cruz’s thinking prior to making Jamón jamón, she was to be disillusioned. Celestino Deleyto notes the burden on Cruz, who said she felt damaged by the role, as she was not mature enough to play it at that time (Deleyto, 1999, p. 278). Elsewhere, she asserted that she had never regretted making the film, but was nervous about it trapping her into a direction she did not wish to go (without specifying what she meant by that), and so was grateful to act in Belle Époque immediately afterwards (García, 2007). Reports from Cruz thus demonstrate a certain ambivalence as to her role as Silvia in Jamón jamón. She does not want to offend a director who has had a fair measure of success in a national film industry that is rather small, and she cannot ignore the pivotal function of the film in launching her career. Nonetheless, she seems to feel that, after all, she did not at that time possess the maturity to cope with the sexuality the role demanded. This might imply that deep down Cruz has a natural innocence that was submerged by her own ambition: it would certainly seem that any notion of youthful naivety was not something deliberately produced by Cruz for the role of Silvia. However, when we take the film in tandem with her subsequent production, Belle Époque, we can perceive innocence as a performance as opposed to a ‘natural’ expectation. Cruz was concerned about the over-sexualised image acquired through her work on Jamón jamón, and fought hard to land a role that would give her résumé more depth (Ángulo Barturen, 2007, p. 183). Fernando Trueba did not originally consider her suitable for the role of Luz in Belle Époque. On the director’s commentary for the DVD of Belle Époque, he says that he thought Cruz very sexy, but what he wanted was a young virgin of about fourteen. He was not even going to give her a test, but changed his mind when her agent sent him a tape of her acting out one of the scenes, which convinced him that she would be perfect for the role: he

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felt that one could believe in her youth. Here Cruz carries out the opposite of her attempts to land a role with Bigas Luna: if previously she aimed to demonstrate that she was more mature than might be expected of someone her age, now she wishes to appear precisely as the virginal fourteen-year-old she denied when auditioning for Las edades de Lulú. So Cruz is making a deliberate effort to prove she can be ‘naturally’ young and virginal. The two films thus need to be taken in tandem in order to get a true sense not only of the star persona being shaped at this early stage but also Cruz’s own active desire to ensure a wider range of roles were available to her.

Jamón jamón The plot of Jamón jamón begins with the love affair between Silvia (Cruz), a worker in a factory making men’s underwear, and José Luis (Jordi Mollà), the son of the factory owners Conchita (Stefania Sandrelli) and Manuel (Juan Diego). The film begins with Silvia informing José Luis of her pregnancy: the couple get engaged, but Conchita, furious at losing her beloved son to a working-class girl and daughter of a sex worker, plans to break the couple up. To do this she enlists the help of Raúl (Javier Bardem), who has applied to be a model for the factory’s underwear: she asks him to seduce Silvia in exchange for rewards such as a motorbike or car. He duly agrees to do this, and Silvia is subsequently torn between the choice of José Luis, who is passive and puny but who represents aspiration to better things, and Raúl’s earthy passion and exaggeratedly male physique. Eventually, she and José Luis quarrel, and she chooses Raúl; but Raúl, meanwhile, has become sexually involved with Conchita. Silvia goes to Manuel for help, and he in turn begins to seduce her. José Luis, meanwhile, discovers his mother’s affair with Rául, and the two young men fight. José Luis is accidentally killed in the fight, and the film ends as the central characters gather round his body.

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Cruz as Silvia in Jamón jamón (1992)

This bald summary suggests the film as a tragedy or melodrama, but in fact it is for the most part a bawdy comedy until the sudden change of mood with José Luis’s death: even the fight that leads to this point has its humorous side as the young men fight with ham bones from the ham warehouse where Raúl works. This is also a film that comically emphasises masculinity from the opening sequences, where the black background against which the opening credits roll turns out to be a close-up of the testicle of an advertising hoarding shaped as a bull’s silhouette (an advertisement for brandy that is now an iconic image of the Spanish countryside and preserved as an item of heritage). Immediately after this shot we cut to a scene of Raúl and his friend practising bullfighting, and the camera offers another close-up, this time of Raúl’s erection outlined behind his shorts. The crude emphasis on masculine genitalia sets the comic tone for the film. Men are very much the butt of this humour, but Jamón jamón has things to say about women, too, and it is not always positive, nor is it necessarily funny. Conchita is snobbish and her desire to keep her son away from Silvia borders on the incestuous, while her affair with Raúl is based in part on sheer mercenary values,

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her willingness to give him consumer goods such as cars and bikes in exchange for sex. Silvia’s mother Carmen (Anna Galiena) is a sympathetic and caring mother, working in a roadside brothel primarily to ensure food on the table for her daughters, and thus is a more positive figure than Conchita, but this does not stop her entertaining her own daughter’s fiancé in the brothel. In this book, however, our primary concern is Silvia, the central character; and Silvia, too, has her negative characteristics. This is not to deny Silvia’s pivotal role as a sympathetic character, a pretty young woman who loves and is loved by her mother; who combines love for José Luis with a not unnatural desire to improve her lot in unpromising surroundings, and who blends an innocent vulnerability with a lively ability to hold her own against Raúl’s flirtatious compliments. Her wistful desire for a closet full of shoes could be seen as mercenary, another example of the obsession with consumerism and consumption that pervades the entire film; but it can also be seen as an innocent pleasure or indulgence. The negativity derives from her role as a possible castrator of men. This is indeed true of all three principal female characters to a greater or lesser extent: the male characters become impotent, infantilised or passive in their encounters with these women. The male body becomes a passive object of desire for women’s scopophilic pleasure, as when Silvia stares lovingly at the advertising billboard featuring Raúl’s crotch modelling underwear, or when Conchita examines the footage of the modelling applicants. Women have control over this crucial area of the male body: as Conchita claims, they are the ones that make the purchasing decisions as to male underwear, and they are also the ones who sew the underwear to frame the male genitalia. Immediately after the opening sequence that emphasises testicles and erect penises, we cut to a montage of images from the underwear factory that suggest castration: women tracing and cutting round the genital area of the underwear with sharp cutting implements, or sinking teeth into a phallic shaped ham roll at lunchtime. Silvia’s own

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castrating role can be detected at various points, most notably when she dreams of choosing between Raúl and José Luis: their images float through her dream, immediately followed by a shot of two greyhounds racing as if in competition. Later in the dream Silvia, naked in the landscape, appears undecided between the two hambones she is holding. The dream prefigures the duel to the death at the end of the film, but it also bestows on Silvia the power of choosing while the men compete for her favours, thus depriving them of a certain measure of power. However, castration here is not simply a figurative loss of power but a direct threat to the penis. Silvia dreams of cutting through a bull’s horn, slicing it off: this, combined with the subsequent image of an apparently castrated Raúl hanging from some goalposts, stresses Silvia’s malignant power of cutting (after all, she works in the underwear factory too). Thus, although Silvia is the most sympathetic character out of the women, she shares with them a castrating power that is dangerous to men. This element of the film, as opposed to the contrast between male posturing and their emasculation, is not played for comic effect at all. Now at this point in her career Cruz has no star persona to speak of, so early films such as this one are crucial in laying the foundations for the persona she would subsequently present. From the very beginning of her visible presence as a leading actor, then, we find elements of danger and of women as stereotypically castrating and malign. It gives Cruz in her role of Silvia an element of power that is not always positive. Silvia/Cruz can be dangerous. This is, nonetheless, only one element of the role of Silvia that would form some of the foundations of Cruz’s star persona, as the role also suggests that her power over Raúl is positive but also vulnerable. We see this from the sequence in which Raúl and his friend seek help at Silvia’s house after their daredevil nude bullfighting stunt which ends in their naked getaway from the overseer’s gun. The two young men arrive at Silvia’s door pre-castrated as it were, covering their genitals with chairs from outside the house, their bravado reduced to pathos.

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When Silvia comes out of her door, she is holding a large knife that carries its own menace and threat of castration.1 As they come into the house for clean clothes, she is clearly in charge. But at this point her power is made more benign by her actions of care, not only providing the missing clothes but also cleaning Raúl’s bruised and dirty foot, anointing his foot with oil in a virtually biblical fashion. Her positioning at Raúl’s foot does something to diminish her power. The moment Raúl becomes too flirtatious, however, she is able to take charge and throw him out, though not without a smile at the faces he pulls at her through the window. She has control but is clearly attracted. In this scene Cruz demonstrates a great deal of poise, an ability to handle and perform control mixed with desire at a surprisingly mature level given her young age at this point. Her upright stance with shoulders thrown back and her firm tone of voice suggest an assured authority. If Cruz represents youth, it is a youth that is, in this scene at least, strikingly confident. Yet elsewhere Silvia does not have the power to galvanise José Luis into breaking with his mother and marrying her. José Luis’s reaction to her desire for Raúl is a virtual rape of her under the bull hoarding: he also punches the testicle on the bull hoarding until it breaks off, and Silvia uses it to shelter from the pouring rain as she runs to Raúl, the testicle symbolising the need for male protection. This extends further to José Luis’s father Manuel, whose immediate sexual moves on her when she goes to him for help suggest an all too familiar and easy equation between protection and sexual favours. In being at the sexual whim of the three male characters Silvia seems very much less than empowered. Peter Evans has noted how the idea of needing protection and the search for a father figure has penetrated Cruz’s star persona. Evans observes that Cruz has often played the role of daughter in her early films (Belle Époque being one of these), or a role akin to that of daughter: in addition, her role as ‘la niña’ in La niña de tus ojos (which

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will form part of our discussion in the next chapter) also emphasised her role as a sort of child, since ‘niña’ in Spanish means a little girl. Evans argues that in this film (as we shall subsequently see) Cruz becomes ‘nuestra Penélope’ or ‘our Penélope’, the child of all Spain (Evans, 2004, pp. 54–5). Nonetheless, Evans argues, this positioning as a vulnerable daughter needing love and protection is not incompatible with a pronounced erotic quality. He points to an image of Cruz taken in 1997 for the Spanish film magazine Cinemanía in which she is dressed in 1960s style: she is looking downwards in a submissive fashion and she appears to be sucking her thumb, which suggests a childish quality but also erotic possibilities. Evans argues this is of a piece with many other publicity photos in which Cruz may or may not be looking directly to camera but in which she always appears gentle and submissive, accents that continued even in her later international career, where she was still to be found playing the daughter of fathers, as in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001, to be discussed in Chapter 3). Yet erotic overtones may also be read into such roles and images. If Cruz is a postfeminist icon according to Stone (quoted in the previous chapter), Evans implies that such a triumphant and settled assertion of female equality is a fairly domesticated one in Cruz’s case, describing her as less of a wild animal and more of a kitten (Evans is comparing her to the older Spanish star Victoria Abril: ibid., p. 58). Evans believes that Cruz can rebel, but even this entails a certain submissiveness towards father figures. For example, in Entre rojas Cruz’s character is sent to prison for aiding and abetting her leftwing boyfriend in his political activities, but when her father visits her in prison she tells him that she has done nothing (pp. 58–9). Of this and other 1990s films Evans notes both her nature as a good girl and the way in which costume is used in such films to emphasise her feminine attractiveness rather than the authenticity of her role. However, I think it is also worth emphasising that the rebelliousness that Evans also detects arises out of personal concerns of love, desire

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Behind bars for love: Entre rojas (1995)

and sympathy for others rather than wider public concerns such as politics. Entre rojas demonstrates this well: her imprisonment derives from her love for her boyfriend, to the extent of helping him in his resistance to the Franco regime, rather than any personal commitment to political ideals which she clearly does not have. Her final alignment with left-wing political beliefs towards the end of the film derives from the friendships she makes with other prisoners more than from any absorption of indoctrination. Evans concludes that Cruz does not possess the characteristics of the femme fatale (although he notes in passing her later positioning as the ‘other woman’ who broke up Cruise and Kidman), and lacks any threat of castration: rather, her persona suggests youth, beauty, light and elegance (ibid., p. 59). This contrast between some of the more negative elements in Silvia’s portrayal and Evans’s description suggests how far Cruz had to work in her subsequent roles in order to incorporate a more feminine softness into her persona that mitigates any suggestion of the castrator. It is not that these elements are not already present within Silvia: her love for her mother, her

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sparky charm that allows her to trade both warm smiles and cutting put-downs with Raúl, her distraught reaction to her drunken father’s visits, the simple fact that she begins the film in love and pregnant by a man who, though weak, feels a genuine desire to marry her – all these inspire sympathy. Yet the sexual elements of Silvia’s character include a more malign potential that complicates our sympathy for her, which indicates the intricacies of Cruz’s role and the subtleties she had to assume at a very early stage in her career. Deleyto (1999) perceives the power of Silvia as possibly dangerous but not necessarily malign: comparing her to the Aragonese landscape in which the film is set, he argues that the barren terrain, coded as feminine (p. 273), does not suggest a dead land but one that is seething, about to erupt (p. 278), and in this sense it comes to represent female sexual energy and passion expressed above all by Silvia. This comparison suggests Silvia’s desire as a natural force that cannot be repressed. The suggestion of passion as a natural and compelling force would tie in with Cruz’s resemblance to the exotic femme fatale in later roles, especially abroad, including the notion that Hispanic identities are ruled by emotion and inclination rather than by reason. Deleyto argues that Silvia is the central character: ‘It is mostly through her that we perceive the other characters and for her that the spectacle of both powerful and weak masculinity is staged’ (ibid., p. 276). This gives Cruz’s role extraordinary power, since arguably the whole story is about her and the other characters are seen from her point of view: Deleyto implies that we should see things as Silvia sees them, which gives her power as the subject rather than the object of desire. In this sense, then, women’s power to choose as suggested in Silvia’s dream may suggest castration but it also suggests the reversal of roles that allows women greater subjectivity. Deleyto also argues that, as the heroine, she is presented in melodramatic form as the woman who suffers – and who thus cannot achieve her initial desire – because of her social position: ‘The melodrama of unyielding

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Silvia as the subject who chooses

virtue cannot contain her sexual desire’ (ibid., p. 277). It is this desire that causes the events that lead to chaos and death, but also give Silvia/Cruz subjective power which underscores further the ambiguous nature of the role of Silvia. Silvia’s subjectivity is not absolute, however, and does not prevent her from also functioning as an erotic object for both the male characters and the audience. Cruz’s costumes for the most part suggest further possibilities of exploitation, as she trots around the countryside in short, skimpy dresses. As if this was not enough, Bigas Luna at one point introduces rain into his scenario in order to ensure, among other things, that Silvia’s white dress is rendered transparent and reveals her breasts. It is in this state, soaking wet in a transparent dress, that she arrives at the café and finds Raúl: and the casual way in which he immediately has sex with her in full view of the café clientele suggests not only her uncontrollable passion, and his gaining of the upper hand (as suggested by his casual, almost indifferent demeanour at this point), but her availability for exploitation. The café scene is partly humorous, but the ultimate butt of the humour is Silvia herself, precisely because her costume

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marks her out as available for sex. Cruz would often land roles as working-class or peasant girls, and her day dresses here suggest cheapness and working-class values (in strong contrast to Conchita’s smart suits). However, her long dress in the scene at her home with the nude bullfighters offers her a more majestic pose and a sweep reminiscent of red carpets: when it comes to the point of throwing Raúl out of the house she stands dominating the scene (even though she is in the background and Raúl in the foreground), her head raised as if relishing her power, in full knowledge that she has it. This luxuriating in her power prefigures her powerful languorous stretch as she goes to take sexual charge of Fernando in Belle Époque, as we shall see below. Cruz’s costume and gestures here bestow a maturity and remoteness that distinguishes her from the overgrown boy that is Raúl – until she starts to giggle at his behaviour. Cruz as Silvia points forward to the star she will be and her ability to adopt the appropriate demeanour, but the giggles suggest that youth has not yet been left behind. Costume and gesture thus offer an ambivalent idea of Silvia/Cruz as exploitable object and as a subject in control. Jamón jamón prefigures the complexities incorporated into Cruz’s star persona from a very early point in her career. Cruz could not have known at the time how pivotal this role would be for her. If her immediate reaction was to create some distance from the role, this did not prevent her from working again with Bigas Luna at a later date on the film Volavérunt (1999), another ensemble piece concerning the relationship of the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya and the Spanish Duchess of Alba (whom Goya often painted). According to the film, the Duchess of Alba was involved in court intrigue and was subsequently killed by poisoning. Cruz plays Pepita, the mistress of Godoy, the King’s favourite, played by Jordi Mollà: Godoy is also lover of the Queen, played by Stefania Sandrelli. Cruz was thus reunited with some of the other Jamón jamón actors. She again played the role of a lower-class young girl involved in the intrigues of the upper classes, and some nudity was involved: but

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Volavérunt (1999)

Volavérunt was not a bawdy comedy but a glossy costume drama, a prestige project that involved Cruz in far less risk – and in any case by this time her star status was more established. Nonetheless, the role still stressed youth compared to the older and more cynical Spanish court which the painter Goya (Jorge Perugorría) observes with a strong note of disgust. Cruz is in a supporting role to that of Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as the Duchess precisely because of the youth and innocence of her character – at least to begin with, because it turns out that Pepita herself was involved in part of the intrigue that led to the Duchess’s ingestion of poison. Once more, Bigas Luna uses Cruz to suggest more to playing youthfulness than sheer exuberance. Youth, too, can take on the corruption of older generations.

Belle Époque If Jamón jamón provided much of the foundation for Cruz’s star persona, then Belle Époque was equally pivotal for demonstrating Cruz’s desire to take control of and to soften a persona that was only just coming into being, as we have already seen. It was also crucial for its international success, including the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, ensuring a wider audience for the early Cruz. Belle Époque

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formed part of a wider trend for sunlit nostalgic films set in Mediterranean countries, such as Cinema Paradiso (1988) and Mediterraneo (1991), gentle comedies with lovable characters, but often with a hint of menace in the background since such stories often involve a relation to historical events such as wars and political upheavals. The nostalgia has a wistful element as these warm pleasures are all the more poignant for suggesting ultimate loss and separation. There is also a strong romantic element, with a love affair often central to the plot. Cruz’s appearance in this type of film prefigures her later appearance in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin that foregrounds romance and war more strongly but which includes the usual cast of comic village characters. Jamón jamón and Belle Époque are both comedies that suggest strong women and weaker men, although the latter film has a lighter touch to its comedy; and while sexuality is still pronounced in Belle Époque the emphasis on male genitalia has disappeared. There are, nonetheless, significant differences between the two films, such as the different eras in which the films take place, the contrasting settings and the greater emphasis Trueba gives to the innocence of pure pleasure. One of the most notable of these differences is the change in Cruz’s role. In both films she plays a girl on the verge of entry into adulthood and adult roles (marriage in particular) who competes with other women for the attention of the man she loves. But the Cruz of Belle Époque shows an ability to show youth as gaucheness that was absent in Jamón jamón, and arises in part from her position as the youngest child of the family but also from the distance that Cruz creates between her role as Luz and as Silvia, by emphasising the comparative childishness of the former. She also shows an attenuated sense of vulnerability that arises from the more secure and middle-class family structure of her character. Belle Époque takes place in rural Spain in the 1930s, in the calm before the escalation of political conflict and violence and then the storm of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Fernando (Jorge Sanz) is

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a young and handsome army deserter on the run who encounters Manolo (Fernando Fernán Gómez) and goes to stay in his house. Manolo’s four daughters arrive for the summer: Rocío (Maribel Verdú), Clara (Miriam Díaz Aroca), Violeta (Ariadna Gil) and Luz (Cruz). All take a fancy to Fernando and each woman in turn contrives a sexual encounter with him. Luz, however, the youngest daughter and the last to take her turn, is the one who eventually marries him (with the connivance of her mother, a travelling opera singer who returns home in the latter half of the film). As summer comes to an end, Luz and Fernando leave with her mother for a new life in America, while the other daughters return to their lives away from the family home. Although the film never explicitly states it, Spain is about to undergo the terrible upheaval of the Civil War, and Spanish audiences at least would be aware of this event as emphasising this glorious summer as one of a lost paradise where life was warmer, more innocent and more pleasurable. Belle Époque is thus saturated with nostalgia while remaining apolitical as to the cause of change: some comments are made as regards the different political sides and the role of religion (a crucial element that influenced political ideologies of the time), but for the most part these are made for comic effect, apart from the jarring suicide of the local leftist priest who was to marry Luz and Fernando. That suicide is the one dark note that points forward to the imminent Spanish conflict, but it is subsumed in the wistful regret that follows shortly after as the film ends and all the characters go their separate ways, Luz triumphant at having married the man that all her sisters desired. The light touch as regards politics – the matter of how to remember the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship that followed is still a sensitive topic in Spain – sits well with the apolitical nature of Cruz’s subsequent star persona. At this stage in Cruz’s career this is likely to be no more than coincidence, but it is of a piece with the emphasis in Cruz’s roles on the personal rather than the political that we considered in

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the introduction. While none of the sisters show any particular concern as to politics, Cruz is kept separate from the immediate dark future of Spain by virtue of her character’s imminent emigration to America. In contrast to the central role played by Cruz’s character of Jamón jamón (as Deleyto argues), Luz is a supporting role and functions as part of an ensemble cast: to a great extent the roles of her sisters are as dominant if not more so, and for much of the film she is simply a hanger-on, the irritating kid sister who is sometimes in the way. Only towards the end does Luz come into her own: last of the line of sisters but not least. The original poster for the film emphasises the ensemble cast, none of whom are illustrated out of proportion to the others. Fast-forwarding nearly two decades, however, the cover of the UK DVD release features Cruz prominently in close-up, emphasising her as star, while other leading actors’ faces appear in a smaller strip at the bottom. The cover also names her as star but no one else. This is despite the fact that when she made the film she was still only a supporting actor and hardly the film’s star: that star status has been attributed to her in retrospect because of her subsequent career. If Cruz was not a box-office draw at the time when the film was made, the DVD distributors now perceive her as the film’s main selling point. Luz/Cruz as part of the ensemble is distinguished by her more juvenile behaviour (she is prone to childish sulks) and appearance: often in pigtails, in an early scene dressing up in her mother’s clothes, dancing about while her sisters are occupied in chores. At the carnival she is virtually unrecognisable blacked up, dressed as a ‘native girl’ in a way that serves in fact to cover up any latent sexuality: she looks particularly childish. On a couple of occasions she has a large bow in her hair that again emphasises her comparative youth. Evans (2004, p. 56) argues that Cruz as Luz is initially ‘ingenuous, adolescent, almost asexual … her body delicate and

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The childish Luz of Belle Époque (1992)

clumsy’, a strong contrast to the other forms of female sexuality offered by her sisters. He particularly notes the scene in which the sisters gather round their mother on the latter’s bed: it is Luz who curls up right against her mother’s ample bosom in a pose that harks back to babyhood. Finally, Evans notes the words used to describe the first kiss between Luz and Fernando as her mother and sisters look on: ‘first love, so pure, so chaste, so spiritual’. Evans suggests these are words of envy, and argues that these romantic qualities trace themselves across Cruz’s persona to recall in spectators their own lost innocence (although this will not negate the sexuality of Cruz’s subsequent night-time scene with Fernando, as she grows into womanhood, as I discuss below). Luz is the butt of teasing, particularly about her desire for Fernando, as occurs in the above-mentioned scene of the girls surrounding their mother: the scene is broken up when the older sisters reveal Luz’s crush to their mother, and Luz rushes out in a fury. However, it should be noted that she is the one who marries Fernando in the end, causing a certain amount of envy and resentment in her sisters when they and their mother catch the young couple kissing and the mother blithely determines to marry them off, unaware of the displeased exchange of looks between her other

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daughters. This reversal of fortune, however, only occurs towards the end of the film: meanwhile, Luz is continually shut out of conversation that her sisters deem too adult for her, mostly to do with their desire for Fernando. Their attitude and her sulky reactions underscore the placement of Luz as very much the youngest child, not yet mature enough for adult pleasures. Luz’s triumph over her sisters provides a vicarious sense of revenge for the hurts and slights we have all suffered as children. This hypothetical redressing of childhood wrongs that Cruz enacts for us is part of the performance of youth, the deliberate invocation of it, highlighted by her enactment of the stroppy teenager. The contrast between the two young women in the two films we consider in this chapter suggests that youth is not necessarily or automatically an entity that a young actor would naturally convey. Cruz, at some level, is deliberately acting out, performing, a perception of youth, rather than simply being herself. The virginal crush of Luz and the sexual circulation of Silvia suggest very different ideas in play as to what it is to be a young woman: if Luz’s reactions revert to childishness at times, then Silvia’s mixture of vulnerability and power suggests the greater maturity of someone who has had, perhaps, to grow up a little too fast. Class has its role to play here. What is impossible to tell is the extent to which Cruz is actually performing these different aspects of youth: how far does she deliberately adopt these attitudes and how far do they come to her naturally? Any of these aspects may, of course, be true of the ‘real’ Cruz at one time or another, but the ability to show this range of youthful attributes across a short time span does suggest that deliberate performance is going on to some degree. Yet these different attitudes may also reflect real concerns for Cruz as she developed her career. The DVD extras include interviews with cast and crew: Cruz features, but not heavily, as these interviews were clearly conducted at the time of shooting (rather than later, with the explicit purpose of adding DVD extras: DVDs

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and their extras did not exist at the time the film was made) and thus she did not warrant the prominence she would acquire later. Cruz as herself, talking about her role, shows an eagerness which is highly reminiscent of Luz’s excitement in all that is going on: Cruz shows an innocent and unpolished enthusiasm for making the film that will disappear into a mannered smoothness once she is an established star, where often she takes good care to say very little in her interviews and extras. Her interviews here suggest film-making as fun and adventure, a game as opposed to work (that parallels Luz’s antics in trying on dresses while her sisters are occupied in chores). Nonetheless, her comments on Ariadna Gil’s transformation into a creepy man implies more experience – ‘we’ve all been followed by a man like that’, she says – that offers some contrast to her girlish enthusiasm and suggest a more experienced awareness of the world. Cruz’s girlishness in her interviews may in fact simply be a prolongation of her performance: she is, after all, interviewed on set. We need to compare this to Cruz’s earlier comments as regards Jamón jamón, where she felt she was mature enough for Bigas Luna’s roles and where she felt regret when filming ended (Ángulo Barturen, 2007, p. 117). We may also remember, however, that the question of performing youth is not simply about appearing to be young and fresh-faced. Though Cruz certainly qualifies on this score in Belle Époque – fresh-faced in terms of being new on the Spanish cinema scene as well as playing a virginal but hopeful young girl – there is more than this to the whole oscillation between the ‘types’ she plays in these two early films. For youth is also about coming to terms with the adult world, of making adjustments in order to fit in with it to some degree. Cruz’s innocent enthusiasm for film-making does not preclude knowledge of the nastier sides of sexual desire, as her comments about creepy men indicate. Equally, she can perceive film-making as an adventure while, nonetheless, having the savvy to make calculated moves to enhance her career within it.

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This focus on entry into the adult world in both films is also why Cruz is positioned as desiring subject rather than desired object. In Belle Époque, just as in Jamón jamón, men are still the objects of the female gaze while, as Barry Jordan observes, the women of the film are ‘active, gazing subjects’ (Jordan, 1999, p. 290), despite the apparent difference in tone between the two films; although, as Jordan notes, in Trueba’s film there is more ‘complementarity’, more equality between male and female desiring gazes. But Luz’s desire is singled out and separated from that of her sisters precisely because of her youth. For her, the chance of love with Fernando is not simply the momentary indulgence of desire that it is for her sisters, but a serious move towards entry into adulthood. It is notable that her sisters are not jealous of each other but they do express a note of envy towards Luz when she and Fernando are discovered kissing and her mother decides they should marry. Once Fernando kisses Luz, we no longer see her dressed like a little girl with her hair in plaits. After their kiss, Luz takes the initiative in seeking out Fernando at night: as she rises from her own bed in order to go and join him in his, she visibly luxuriates in her approach to a fully sexual womanhood. Her movements become more languid, less precipitate, the way in which she stretches and shakes out her hair is maturely sensual. Evans (2004, pp. 56–8) has noted the camera movements in her night-time encounter with Fernando: the emphasis on her loose hair, the short slip – in contrast to her juvenile clothes of earlier – and the camera lingering on her buttocks and breasts before reaching her face. On one level the camera clearly underscores Cruz’s performance: a deliberate signal of the move from girlhood to womanhood. Yet such changes are also integral to the entry of young women to adulthood (if not necessarily natural or inevitable, as these moves and actions can be learned and deliberately adopted or indeed denied or rejected). Moreover, this is not simply Luz’s entry to full womanhood but Cruz’s as well: Belle Époque enacts Cruz’s ability to move from playing young parts – to being the childlike character waiting to grow

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into subjectivity – to womanhood, including the possibility of being the object rather than the subject of desire. Indeed, Belle Époque emphasises this in a way similar to Jamón jamón: while by her decision to take the initiative in arranging a night-time tryst Luz shows herself to be a powerful desiring subject, the camerawork offers up Cruz as an object of desire. Jamón jamón constantly plays, obviously and crudely, with the possibility of Cruz as object as well as subject by the overly stated desire for her by Raúl in particular, as well as the over-emphasis on her breasts. Belle Époque denies her sexuality for quite a while by hiding Cruz’s body under girl’s clothing: by slowing down both Cruz and the camera at this point the film forces us to stop and contemplate Cruz, and the sheer contrast to her giddiness and her virginal clothing of before underscores strongly her transformation into sexual object as well as subject. Alberto Mira points out that all four women are ‘constructed to a large extent as the projections of a male heterosexual gaze, rather than autonomous characters’ (Mira, 2005, p. 201). Although Fernando is the apparent object of desire while the women are the subjects, his body is not photographed with the lingering emphasis applied to the sisters’ breasts and buttocks (p. 206). Luz’s youth does not ultimately preclude her from entering into the objectification already shared by her sisters: as soon as she appears to grow up she must also accept being the object of the male gaze. This in turn feeds into Cruz’s nascent persona: the films here both subjectify and objectify her in an uneasy tension that will play itself out in her later career in which feistiness and strength of character are found alongside a reduction to exotic otherness and an object of display in magazine spreads. It is possible, too, that Luz/Cruz is also growing into the role of woman as castrator as seen in Jamón jamón, for Luz closes off untrammelled sexual desire. Jordan argues that ‘The movie tries to sell us the delights of paradox and foregrounds the unregulated side of human desire as perfectly legitimate, indeed necessary to healthy

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The adult Luz signals the end of indiscriminate desire for Fernando

living’ (Jordan, 1999, p. 307). Fernando’s seduction by each of the sisters in turn is presented in a warm and light-hearted manner that fits with the film’s general nostalgic tone of an innocently frolicking Spain before the Civil War shattered this Garden of Eden. Sexual activity becomes just another form of play and amusement, and its pleasure is neutral. Luz, however, forecloses this possibility for Fernando at least. José Colmeiro (2005, p. 203) suggests that the women of Belle Époque are identified with an alternative Spanish identity more in tune with today’s mores, and they represent the lost hope of the Second Spanish Republic, once Franco’s regime emerged to destroy it. But Luz’s position within this construction is more ambiguous, in that she also heralds the end of the freedom of sexual desire, which now becomes caught up in the conservative patriarchal structures of monogamy. The serial sexual pleasures with the other three sisters, including the confusion of gender roles inspired by Violeta, are in the end closed off. Mira (2005, p. 202) notes that at the end of the film as Fernando says goodbye to Rocío, Clara and Violeta, Luz ‘keeps a watchful eye on her sisters, as if to make sure there will not be any more fun with them’. He goes on to point out that the signal that the Arcadian idyll is now over is Fernando’s new obligation to ‘commit to one woman, enter a life of

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responsibility and earn a living’. Luz thus introduces another layer of ambiguity to Cruz’s persona which has already been seen to be complex within the space of only two films released in only one year. Cruz suggests the pleasures of ripening womanhood but also the denial of full enjoyment of that pleasure precisely because sexual desire more widely must be curtailed. She suggests both pleasure and its foreclosure. Evans (2004, p. 56) argues that Cruz’s character gains increasingly more importance in the film until she comes to form the perfect Spanish couple with Fernando. Her ideal femininity contrasts with the more active energy of her older sisters who have dominated the film (and dominated her) up to this point. The sense of Cruz as the ideal feminine is clearly important to her developing star persona, but it also suggests this ideal as curtailing more indiscriminate sexual pleasures. Such an ideal does not, however, necessarily entail submissiveness. Although Luz’s temper tantrums underscore her youth they also act as precursor to Cruz as feisty (in films such as Bandidas) or, more negatively, hysterical (Blow, Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Whereas Silvia had no problems dominating the scene with a naked Raúl at her house, Luz herself shows spirit as well as resentment as a feverish Fernando hallucinates about all her sisters but not herself. While Luz’s temper is clearly seen as an integral part of teenage sulks, as opposed to the mocking laughter of her sisters who are more familiar with and accepting of the codes of mature adult behaviour, the temperamental element will stick to Cruz beyond roles where her primary characteristic is youth. Evans (ibid.), who commented on Cruz as the submissive daughter in Jamón jamón, observes that this submissiveness is even more pronounced in Belle Époque. However, given Manolo’s laissez-faire attitude towards his daughters there is little sign of Luz/Cruz as the submissive daughter. Luz seems secure in her relationship with her father, and, in contrast to Jamón jamón where she constantly searches for male protection, in Belle Époque her father is an assured source of joy

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rather than a matter for anxiety. Her first word in the film is ‘Papá!’ as she delightedly greets him, and in contrast to the rest of her sisters she is willing to spend time with him in his painting studio. This confidence in her father’s care and company does not, however, contradict Evans’s wider point that Cruz in her early films developed a tendency towards roles where the protection or approval of a father figure was important. Her time with her father in the painting studio still marks her out as young compared to the adult conversation and activities of her sisters. Belle Époque thus sets up the basis for a complex star persona for Cruz, in which, in conjunction with her role in Jamón jamón, she demonstrates that her work is not simply one-note, one-dimensional and thus that she has the capacity for active performance. Youth – the keynote of this chapter and one of the linking elements between the two films – is something she deliberately assumes as well as acts out naturally. But there is no simple division between Cruz the actor and the roles she plays: there is no clear sense of distance and distinction between them, so that it is not clear exactly when she actively adopts a performance of youth. Where the dividing line is particularly blurred, however, is over the matter of Cruz and the roles she plays entering into womanhood: just as Silvia and Luz attempt to find their feet and their position in the adult world to which they are gaining access, so Cruz is also attempting to secure a firm footing as an actor that will allow her the opportunity to perform a range of roles and thus more easily develop her career. These are the films that made Cruz a star in Spain at an early age and point in her career. Although when she acted in them Cruz did not at that time have a star persona – she was not a star before appearing in them – the foundation for Cruz as star was laid here, right at the beginning of her career trajectory, and key elements of her persona, such as the sparky personality, the desire deep down to be a good girl, the association with sexuality, melodrama and comedy, derive from these two films taken together, as do the

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contradictions between subject and object that will continue to trace themselves across Cruz’s later work. For Silvia and Luz, and for Cruz herself, growing into adult womanhood is the chance of realisation of oneself as a desiring subject, but at the cost of also being desired.

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2 PERFORMING NATION

Jamón jamón and Belle Époque not only laid the foundations for Cruz’s star persona at home but also to some extent abroad, given the international reach of both films. However, although they garnered international distribution and recognition, particularly through the Oscar for Belle Époque, their primary market was the Spanish one. In the first instance, they established Cruz as a successful comedy actor. After this first flush of success her career was steady for the next few years but not spectacular: she appeared in a succession of comedies (one of which was El amor perjudica seriamente la salud, which we considered in the previous chapter). Cruz did, however, demonstrate that her abilities were not confined to comedy, as suggested by her first appearance in a costume drama (Melibea, in Gerardo Vera’s 1996 adaptation of Fernando de Rojas’s classic work La celestina) and more particularly her role as Lucía in Entre rojas, demonstrating her capacity to carry a serious drama. The year in which Cruz’s career really began to blossom, however, was 1997, when she starred as the female lead in Alejandro Amenábar’s Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes), a film that would help her gain recognition beyond as well as within Spain when it was subsequently made as Vanilla Sky: both films will be discussed in the next chapter. Amenábar had achieved rapid success with his first feature film Tesis (Thesis, 1995): his rapid rise made him a hot property in Spanish cinema, so Cruz’s subsequent appearance in his second film

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enhanced her career and standing in the national industry. Another milestone in her career was her supporting role in Pedro Almodóvar’s Carne trémula (Live Flesh, 1997), the first time she acted for the director who was already at this stage in his career Spain’s bestknown and most successful contemporary director both at home and abroad. Almodóvar’s mix of comedy and melodrama emphasised Cruz’s earlier skills with both, as demonstrated in Jamón jamón in particular: her appearance in the opening sequence, set during the announcement of Franco’s state of emergency in 1970, ties her to discourses about national history. Nonetheless, her character’s concerns in this film are still personal rather than political: she is too busy giving birth to the child who will grow up to be one of the film’s main characters to be concerned overmuch with political matters. The following year Cruz also took the lead in La niña de tus ojos, a film that proved very successful for home audiences and which linked Cruz more explicitly to national history and national discourses. Both of the films featured in the previous chapter relate Cruz in some way to questions of cinematic national identity, stressing perceptions of Spanishness. While Belle Époque hints at Spain’s past history of civil war precisely through its pastoral idyll in which civil unrest is made conspicuous by its negligible ability to penetrate the haze of nostalgia, Jamón jamón interweaves its critique of gender roles with pot shots at national stereotypes: bulls, tortillas and garlic. The two films establish Cruz as very much rooted in the culture and concerns of her own country, Spain: she becomes very much a Spanish star for Spanish audiences, ‘our Penélope’. Evans (2004, p. 54) observes how, in Jamón jamón, Cruz’s role of Silvia comes to represent an ideal femininity that is specifically Spanish. This chapter picks up on that thread to look at the tensions in her embodiment of national identity, while also raising the question of the perception of Spanishness at home and abroad. With La niña de tus ojos we shall explore how Cruz’s Spanish specificity is consolidated as part of her

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persona for home audiences. La niña also makes reference to how the Spanish are seen from outside Spain, a question we will focus on more specifically in the second of our two films in this chapter, Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

La niña de tus ojos The title of this film is usually translated into English as The Girl of Your Dreams, which is a fair rendition of the Spanish meaning but neglects a pun in that the Spanish can also mean ‘the apple of your eye’, as the word ‘niña’ means both ‘girl’ and the ‘pupil’ in your eye. This implied emphasis on the visual is reflected in the dominance Cruz now has in the film’s poster image, which has remained the same since its release (unlike Belle Époque, which belatedly brought Cruz to the fore in later DVD covers). She dominates the poster/DVD cover with a head and shoulders shot that clearly displays her traditional Spanish costume. Thus, Cruz is the girl of one’s dreams, marked more clearly as star, but also the centre of attention, filling the eye. The plot pivots around other people’s desire for her but also her own desires, playing out once more the oscillation between subject and object that is central to Cruz’s persona. Cruz plays Macarena Granada, a Spanish actor and singer who goes to Nazi Germany to star in a folkloric musical (to be made in both Spanish and German versions). Macarena is having an affair with the director of the Spanish version, Blas Fontiveros (Antonio Resines), but she draws the attention of Josef Goebbels (Johannes Silberschneider), who attempts to begin an affair with her himself, to her great disgust. Instead, she is increasingly attracted to Leo (Karel Dobrý), one of a number of Russian prisoners who are forced by the Germans to participate in the film as unpaid extras. When Leo attempts to escape, Macarena assists him, hiding him in Goebbels’s

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house where the latter hopes to carry out his affair with her. Eventually, Fontiveros asks for the help of Goebbels’s wife (Hanna Schygulla) to separate Macarena from Goebbels: Macarena and Leo leave Germany in safety while Fontiveros is left to face the wrath of Goebbels when he learns he has been tricked.2 With La niña, Cruz was repeating her earlier success with Trueba at the helm. La niña looks back at the españolada, a Spanish form of film musical in which the leading lady was the principal singer, accompanied on occasion by a chorus, thus establishing a tradition which has persisted in Spanish cinema to this day of women combining film acting with a singing career (Ana Belén, for instance). Españoladas were folkloric musical comedies in which the female protagonist – the star – played a working-class, Gypsy or peasant girl who attracts the attention of an upper-class young man (a non-singing role) and eventually marries him, once the usual misunderstandings and comic mishaps are cleared out of the way. Thus Cruz perpetuates her now strong association with Spanish comedy, given that La niña not only celebrates these earlier comedies but is also a comedy itself, albeit one with a surprisingly dark ending. The heyday of these musical films was the 1930s and 40s, a period that encompasses the Spanish Civil War and the early years of General Franco’s dictatorship. Francoist ideology espoused a submissive and traditional role for women, so it seems somewhat anachronistic that españoladas give women a great measure of subjectivity and agency: the woman is the star, the centre of attention and the pivot around which the plot turns. One of the most successful stars of the españolada was the actor and singer Imperio Argentina, whose career ranged beyond such films but who was and is strongly identified with them. During the Civil War Argentina and her then husband, film director Florián Rey, accepted an invitation from Nazi Germany to make españoladas at Germany’s famous Ufa studios. German audiences were fond of Spanish folkloric films, while both Adolf Hitler and Goebbels were

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Imperio Argentina in Carmen, la de Triana (1938)

fans of Argentina. At Ufa Argentina and Rey made two films in Spanish, one of which was Carmen, la de Triana (Carmen, the Girl from Triana, 1938). It is clear, if you know Carmen, la de Triana, that this is the film the Spanish troupe of La niña are making: in particular, the principal song featured in the film, ‘Los piconeros’ (‘The Coal Sellers’), also features as a crucial set piece in Carmen, la de Triana. Other details confirm the resemblance, such as the appearance of a copy of the Spanish film magazine Radiocinema that Macarena flicks through, which closely replicates an original version of the magazine published to celebrate the release of Carmen, la de Triana. Trueba denied that his film referred specifically to Carmen,

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A reluctant Macarena with Goebbels in La niña de tus ojos (1998)

but Argentina, who was still alive when La niña was released, certainly assumed it did, and took offence. One reason for her indignation is that La niña replays a rumour that had dogged Argentina ever since she went to Germany to make the films: that she and Hitler had an affair – a rumour that Argentina always denied, though she certainly met him and found him pleasant company (Argentina and Víllora, 2001, pp. 108–9). La niña alludes to this relationship through the putative liaison between Goebbels and Macarena. Macarena rejects Goebbels, displaying repugnance to him throughout, and chooses instead to run off with Leo. Elsewhere I have suggested that Cruz as Macarena is pivotal in redeeming Argentina as Spanish star, since Macarena’s rejection of Goebbels rectifies the apparent error that Argentina may have committed with Hitler: it rewrites Argentina’s story in a way that glosses over the alleged fault of a star who was herself a Spanish icon in her day (Davies, 2012). Argentina and Macarena both function as exotic Others for the Nazi elite represented by Goebbels, but while the rumour concerning Hitler was a continued taint (and source of fascination) in democratic Spain, Macarena’s love for Leo in conjunction with her distaste for Goebbels means not only that Cruz does not suffer the same taint but also that she redeems Argentina in

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retrospect and recovers her as truly Spanish – while nonetheless retaining the hint of the earlier rumour that brings its own dubious pleasure. Cruz had already become associated with Spanish national identity through Jamón jamón as we saw above: thus, she redeems the role of the heroine of the earlier film and Argentina herself, while nonetheless retaining a specifically Spanish desirability that has since itself come to figure a form of Spanish exoticism for outside audiences (ibid., pp. 20–2). If, as we saw above, Cruz in La niña becomes ‘our Penélope’ for Spanish audiences, this reflects the earlier perception of Argentina as authentically Spanish. Both Cruz and Argentina, then, incorporate ‘authentic’ Spanishness into their star personae which threatens to be exoticised by a foreign gaze. Stone argues that Cruz ‘was a star not just in the making but stamped “Made in Spain” and ready to be passed on to Hollywood’ (2002, p. 200), suggesting both her iconic status in Spanish cinema and the attraction for foreign audiences. La niña ironically reinforces Cruz’s status at home just as her roles elsewhere were showcasing her for parts beyond Spain. Although roles abroad for Cruz were not unknown prior to this point, it was at the very end of the 1990s that Cruz’s international career began to take off; and one reason for this was precisely that she offered the exotic allure that Argentina did to Nazi Germany. Yet Cruz’s character manages finally to elude this positioning as Other: La niña de tus ojos becomes, in the end, an ironically apposite title. Trueba has rewritten Argentina’s story so that she can remain the ‘apple’ of the cinemagoer’s eye that she was during the Franco and Nazi era, while the dubious elements of this move are foisted onto other characters (Davies, 2012, p. 28). Fontiveros ends La niña waiting to find out what Goebbels plans to do with him: another member of the Spanish cast is mistaken for the escaped Leo and suffers torture in a concentration camp, while the film’s Spanish cast are caught up in Kristallnacht when they look for something approaching home cooking in a Jewish restaurant.

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Macarena/Cruz remains above this ‘othering’ despite the desires of Goebbels, thus keeping herself free of taint. Anne Hardcastle (2007, p. 20) points out details of the mise en scène and dialogue that highlight the equation of Cruz with Spanish national identity as figured through Macarena, such as her very first appearance in the film as she steps off the tour bus to assume a position at the heart of the group of Spanish actors. Her red and yellow clothing (the colours of the Spanish flag) mark her out as Spanish, as well as contrasting to the drab colours worn by the other characters, which serve to emphasise Cruz as not only the star within the film and without, but also a specifically Spanish one. Hardcastle notes that this use of red and gold is repeated in scenes where she is filming. This image of Cruz in red and gold for her performance of the film within the film, with a red and yellow dress, red shawl and yellow flowers in her hair, is used for the cover of Triana-Toribio’s book Spanish National Cinema (2003), with bars of red and yellow colour highlighting the title, reinforcing the link between Cruz and the cinema of the nation she represents. Hardcastle also notes that when Goebbels addresses her as ‘Spanien’ (Spain) Macarena/Cruz becomes a substitute for Spain itself (2007, p. 21). Nonetheless, this equation with Spain becomes bound up with ideas of performativity in that Spanishness is something that must be actively carried out, and which indeed can be adopted by others (which then raises the question of authenticity, if anyone can perform it). Macarena’s entire reason for being in Germany is to act out this performance of Spanishness for the cameras, and La niña reinforces this by our awareness of the processes of shooting, editing and the constant cutting of the action. But Macarena must also instruct others in how to perform Spanishness, as when she instructs her audience of extras in the art of Spanish palmas (the rhythm and method for clapping hands in Spanish style). Her relationship with Leo is sparked off by this attempt to draw her extras (concentration camp inmates drafted into filming) into the performance of

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La niña de tus ojos: Cruz performing the nation

Spanishness: she seizes his hands and forces them to clap the correct rhythm. This is the first physical contact between the couple (Davies, 2012, p. 23). Her actions here serve to draw all participants into an act of community that is of a piece with her actions off set, such as ensuring that paella (another symbol of Spanishness) is distributed to the prisoners as well as the actors. As Hardcastle observes, ‘Macarena also offers a particularly sympathetic view of Spain in that she is, of course, beautiful, talented, and ardent in her support of the concentration camp extras’ (Hardcastle, 2007, p. 21). Cruz/ Macarena’s beauty marks her out as star, but a star who shows solidarity with others, and who represents her nation as caring, confident in its own nationality but acknowledging a common humanity with others. Yet the Spanish trappings (castanets, shawl, flounced dresses and flowers in the hair) still mark Cruz out as star, first among equals. If she is as one with her diegetic audience (the tavern clientele who watch the performance), she is also the object of desire on several levels: for the tavern clientele, for the prisoners who play them (and above all Leo), for Goebbels, for the Nazi regime he represents and, lastly, for the audience watching La niña. Performance as both fakery and as acting out national concerns is conveyed in the scene where Macarena weeps over the body of Antonio (Jorge Sanz): in the first take Macarena gives a false and

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exaggerated performance of grief. Before the second take Fontiveros tells Macarena that her father has died in prison. Macarena then gives a moving and tearful performance in the second take that appears genuine, and emotional enough to move the other actors who all comment on her performance. The apparently genuine grief reflects perhaps grief at the loss of a close family member who died while supporting the losing side in the Spanish Civil War, a side which was subsequently vindicated once Spain returned to democracy. Many Spanish families (including perhaps that of Cruz herself as noted below) experienced a grief that they could not subsequently acknowledge under the Franco dictatorship but which can now be acknowledged in retrospect. And yet Cruz is acting out a performance of an actor moved to genuine tears: the suggestion of fakery and performance does not go away. However, the apparently genuine emotion links Cruz more firmly with the national: she cries, among other things, for the sorrow of a war that divides and oppresses Spaniards. The ‘genuine’ grief underneath Macarena’s acting is for both a personal and national tragedy. Nonetheless, Macarena does not take sides, and thus serves once again to point towards the healing of rifts within Spain that derived from the Civil War and the events and circumstances leading up to it, and which can still be found in Spanish political discourse today. Although Macarena’s father has been imprisoned for his political beliefs, she herself is not a committed Republican and her concerns about the course of the war derive from her personal relationships (her father) rather than political ideas. Her resistance against the Nazis again stems not from a specific stance against fascism (which was certainly a political concern in the Civil War) but from a personal dislike of injustice meted out to others, a sense of decency and humanity, and again through personal desire (Leo). This coincides with the generally apolitical element of Cruz’s persona. In an interview in La Vanguardia magazine (Díaz Prieto, 1998, p. 64), Cruz says that she feels Macarena would be apolitical if

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she could, but was unable to be so because of her father being in prison. Cruz also refers to her own grandparents, who were taken away and never seen again, but she does not specify political sides, and declares she does not want to talk of politics. Her memory is avowedly a personal and not a political one. Hardcastle argues (2007, pp. 15–16) that the film is subversive of rather than nostalgic towards the pleasures of the españolada associated with Francoism, so that what we get is ‘a self-conscious españolada in which Spanish identity is constructed from within a framework of European imagery that emphasises a modern, democratic Spanish national image linked to the political ambitions of post-Franco Spain’. In this case, Cruz as star coincides neatly with the project: if she represents Spain it is – despite the nostalgic tone of La niña – a contemporary Spain that places less emphasis on political divisions and more on personal concerns. Cruz’s performance of nation does not preclude performance on other levels, including that of genre, since, until the dark ending of Fontiveros abandoned to his fate, this film is very much a continuation of Cruz’s track record in comedy films. Pietsie Feenstra ties the question of explicit comedy performance back to Cruz’s past career, arguing that Cruz’s flamenco dancing is comic, a fact heightened by Cruz’s reputation to this date (Feenstra, 2008, p. 111). But if that is the case this suggests deliberation on Cruz’s part because of her history as a trained dancer, able to mock up a few flamenco steps for the camera to convince a fictitious German audience. Feenstra argues that the bad German accent adds to the burlesque – but when Macarena discovers Leo and he is then taken away, she becomes what Feenstra considers the true femme fatale who defies the prevailing order (ibid.). In other words, though Feenstra does not actually state this explicitly, the role ceases to be comic. This does not, however, preclude a certain amount of humour in later scenes, such as those where Macarena tries to fend off Goebbels, or the scene in which Leo declares his love for her in

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Russian, to which she responds that she cannot understand what he is saying but that it sounds lovely. Feenstra’s argument raises the whole question of Cruz as a comedy performer as opposed to her ability to stand for the nation and redeem the presumed sins of an earlier star much loved by the Spanish populace. The comedy, in fact, suggests a stronger continuity between Cruz and Argentina than might be assumed by Cruz’s rewriting of history, and serves to reinforce the point I argued elsewhere (Davies, 2012) that Cruz recoups Argentina and allows audiences to dwell in past histories while simultaneously disavowing them. Argentina, in her turn, was supposed to stand for Spain as Cruz does now, but that representation included Argentina’s history of burlesque performances in earlier films where she acts as a picaresque figure trying to get the better of stuffy worthies who would keep her away from fun and from sustenance. Given Cruz’s beginnings in contemporary Spanish cinema, where actors need to be able to turn their hand to any form of cinematic performance given the small size of the industry, her participation in a series of comic roles is no surprise. However, comedy for Cruz above all reinforces her persona as sparky and ready with a good comeback, making use of her trademark rapid delivery of lines with a note of high temper. The comedy of Cruz’s performance does in one case, however, bring into question Argentina’s earlier performance in the German version of Carmen – known as Andalusische Nächte (Andalusian Nights, 1938). Argentina had to learn German phonetically for the part, a motif that Cruz as Macarena repeats here when talking to her German co-star, giving him some dialogue from their forthcoming film (which in the end Macarena will never use). Fontiveros praises her for her knowledge of the German lines, but her German leading man looks startled by them (especially when Macarena underscores her performance by thrusting a flower at him). There is humour here, but also an implicit questioning of whether Argentina really

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understood what she was doing and what was going on in Germany when she was there, saying lines in a language she did not know. Nonetheless, Argentina’s German enunciation is better than Cruz’s in the song ‘Los piconeros’. This raises some unanswerable questions about the performances by both actors. To what extent is performing a lack of German fluency a disassociation with Germany’s Nazi past? Is Cruz deliberately fumbling her German to ensure a distinction between Argentina’s motivations for making a film in German and Cruz/Macarena’s own; or is she simply not very good at German? (In regard to the latter we must remember that Cruz also acts in the English language – with a heavy accent – but again we cannot automatically conclude from this that she could do better in German if she tried.) These points bring us back to our starting one of Cruz as acting in Argentina’s shadow, and to the layer upon layer of mise en abyme of Cruz playing an actor playing another role and simultaneously an actor linked to and figuring an earlier actor. The ‘making of’ extra in the DVD adds to the mise en abyme: instead of the actors talking as themselves about their parts, we have the characters talking about the roles in the film that Fontiveros is trying to make, framed as part of a Spanish film newsreel. The ‘making of’ moves in and out of this faux newsreel item (signalled by the parallel move between black and white and colour). Cruz here does not talk as Cruz but as Macarena, and to help the illusion she is dressed in 1930s fashion. Macarena’s dresser, Trini (Loles León), comments on Macarena’s total dedication to making films: ironically, she concludes by saying that Fontiveros’s film will ensure Macarena gets plenty of future offers, but in fact the film is abandoned and Macarena runs away with Leo. Cruz/Macarena is hardly mentioned throughout the extras, though Trueba does comment on a couple of other actors (Silberschneider and Mirosláv Táborský, who plays an interpreter), but the fake newsreel ends with Fontiveros, Trini and Macarena’s leading man Julián Torralba (Jorge Sanz, who plays Antonio in the film within the

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film) saying how wonderful Macarena is. The extra as a whole ends with the conclusion to Macarena’s German version of ‘Los piconeros’: we hear ‘Perfekt!’ in voiceover and Macarena responds ‘Danke!’ and then we pause on her silhouette before the end credits roll. These extras emphasise not so much Cruz but Macarena as star, with a nod to the film’s backstory of Carmen, la de Triana; but the ‘real’ Cruz is hidden away beneath these multiple layers of text. La niña is a film that marks Cruz out clearly as star, as opposed to Jamón jamón (where she had a leading role but no track record) or Belle Époque (where Cruz is simply part of an ensemble); and, in a role rooted in the past of Spanish cinema and paying oblique homage to an earlier Spanish star, it is no surprise that Cruz earned her first Goya award (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars) for her role in La niña. The ability to redeem Argentina’s earlier career in Nazi Germany while remaining apolitical marked Cruz out as a perfect icon of reconciliation in post-Franco Spain. La niña is clever in indulging a taste for nostalgia while being at pains to deny some of the more uncomfortable truths about the divisions in Spain, and this dexterity traces itself across Cruz’s persona as well in its apoliticism.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona Ten years later, Vicky Cristina Barcelona was something of a personal triumph for Cruz given her first Oscar success for her role as María Elena, just as La niña gave her her first Goya success at home. After a gap of over a decade Cruz found herself working with Javier Bardem once again: although her relationship with Javier Bardem that began to develop round about this time was not widely known, with hindsight we can perceive a change in Cruz’s personal bio as she left behind the rumours of serial love affairs with her leading men for a more settled relationship that would eventually lead to marriage. By now, too, Cruz was working with an internationally famous auteur,

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Cruz as María Elena in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Woody Allen, who himself had embarked on a new phase in which he appears to be have abandoned his trademark setting of New York for a European tour of which Vicky Cristina formed the Spanish leg. Ingrid Sischy (2009) argues that Woody Allen wrote the part for Cruz after seeing her in Volver (which we will consider in Chapter 4). Sischy cites Allen’s enthusiasm about Cruz as a performer, and suggests he was the first American director to make the most of her talent for comedy: she also compares her to Jean Harlow and Carole Lombard, following a trend to see Cruz as part of a long line of respected actresses that had already become prominent with Volver. With the gap between this film and La niña, we can see that questions to do with how Spain is seen at home and abroad persist and form a part of Cruz’s star persona, although now we are considering a film to do with how Americans see Spain, rather than how Spain sees itself; the American point of view still causes some anxieties in Spain. Vicky Cristina earned a fair amount of negative criticism, though Cruz herself managed to come out of the attacks relatively

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unscathed. Many reviewers outside Spain disliked the tendency to virtual tourism in the film, the laconic and intrusive voiceover and the flat performances of some of the actors, which was often why Cruz came out well in comparison. Although Spanish critics were just as suspicious as foreign ones of the potential of the film to show Spain (or Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital) in reductive terms, for them Cruz’s role was viewed as a national success, a triumph in which the whole nation could share. The then Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero recognised the Oscar as one ‘for our cinema and our culture’, saying Spain was proud of the achievement. The Spanish royal family sent a telegram of congratulations (Rota, 2009). Anecdotally, a Madrid policeman, spotting Cruz travelling through the city just prior to her departure for the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles, shouted at her ‘Bring us back an Oscar!’ (Belinchón, 2009). Spanish national daily El País, in reporting on Vicky Cristina’s opening in the USA, noted that the American press lauded the performances of both Bardem and Cruz, and picked out the phrase ‘animal intensity’ as encapsulating press reaction to Cruz’s acting (Ayuso, 2008): El País’s use of the story is another example of the newsworthiness of Cruz’s successful performance for Spaniards. Ironically, however, as we shall see, Cruz earned these plaudits for a supporting rather than a leading role, but one which also has a distinct tendency to a stereotyped Other. Although the film is set primarily in Barcelona, with some scenes also taking place in Oviedo in the north of Spain, Vicky Cristina is a film about Americans above all: the social and sexual behaviour of middle-class Americans and their attitudes to a different culture. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) visit Barcelona, Vicky intending to complete her Masters study in Catalan identity, Cristina to find her purpose in life, sexual adventures and an outlet for her artistic impulses. They meet an artist called Juan Antonio (Bardem) who invites them to Oviedo. Cristina hopes to sleep with him, but in the end she falls sick and it is Vicky who is seduced by him,

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despite her engagement to somebody back in America. Once back in Barcelona, however, it is Cristina who embarks on an affair with Juan Antonio, while Vicky marries her American fiancé. Subsequently, Juan Antonio gives a home to his ex-wife María Elena (Cruz) after she attempts suicide. The couple begin a three-way relationship with Cristina, while María Elena teaches her about photography, for which the latter has a gift. Cristina, however, becomes increasingly uncomfortable about the ménage a trois. Vicky, meanwhile, finding her marriage unfulfilling, resumes her affair with Juan Antonio. At one assignation, however, María Elena arrives brandishing a gun: there is a struggle, and Vicky is shot in the hand. Vicky and Cristina both leave Barcelona, their love affairs having left them unsatisfied. If this is a film about Americans, their sociocultural attitudes are held up to scrutiny and ridicule, in particular through the tonguein-cheek tone of the intrusive voiceover (given by Christopher Evan Welch). Although not everyone liked the voiceover (for example, Wolcott, 2009), its irony cues us to adopt a critical approach to the actions of the characters; and since the voiceover only directs commentary at the American characters, they are the ones subject to most implicit criticism. Some of this disapproval derives from the inability of the characters to take a nuanced approach to other cultures: for example, Vicky’s Masters thesis on Catalan identity is easily understood as a reductive approach to a complex topic. Nonetheless, this scrutiny and ridicule of certain American attitudes comes partly through the interaction of the American characters with Spanish ones, above all Juan Antonio and María Elena. Here it is arguable how far Allen avoids the trap of seeing other cultures reductively, the very thing he implicitly criticises Vicky and Cristina for. Both the characters of Juan Antonio and María Elena can be understood in terms of othering, of seeing them only as Spanish stereotypes that differ from anglophone rationality. Americans were not the first to see Spain in terms of an exotic and possibly ethnic Other, as the French, in particular, had got there

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before them. Nineteenth-century French culture, above all, had a habit of seeing Spain as the land of the primitive Other next door, poised between the civilisation of northern Europe and, to the south, Africa and the Orient. Notorious in this respect is the French writer Théophile Gautier, in his seminal Voyage en Espagne: L’Espagne, qui touche l’Afrique comme la Grece à l’Asie, n’est past faite pour les mœurs européens. Le genie de l’Orient y perce sous toutes les forms, et il est fâcheux peut-être qu’elle ne soit pas restée Moresque ou mahométane. (Gautier, 1981, p. 236) (Spain, which borders Africa as Greece borders Asia, is not designed for European ways. The spirit of the Orient penetrates it in all its forms, and perhaps it is annoying that Spain has not remained Moorish or Mohammedan.)

Orientalist ideas have persisted ever since as regards Spain; and to some extent the two Spanish characters embody ideas about primitive otherness. Juan Antonio suggests a promiscuous sexuality often associated with the Oriental Other, an attraction of which the two American women are happy to take advantage but which they also agonise about or attempt to rationalise – an approach that appears alien to Juan Antonio, suggesting his sexual activities as more natural and unreflective. However, it is Cruz’s performance as María Elena which is our primary concern here. Our initial impression of her is as hysterical and irrational, although she turns out to be a sympathetic character as well, who nurtures Cristina’s career in photography. María Elena enters the film having just attempted suicide, while much of her dialogue consists of impassioned arguments with former husband Juan Antonio. As well, as outward signs of emotion such as her hair in disarray (Perriam, 2013), she demonstrates a good range of histrionics that matches the stereotype of Spanish women as fiery, hot-tempered – and also

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The Spanish woman as hysteric: María Elena

flexible in her morals as suggested in the ménage a trois she sets up with Cristina and Juan Antonio, allowing for the famous lesbian kiss between Cruz and Johansson. Cruz’s performance invokes Carmen, that familiar stereotype of Spanish womanhood that offered up passion, violence and loose morals for the jaded French palates of the nineteenth century. It is notable that the apparently liberal Cristina, looking to ‘find’ herself sexually, in fact becomes rather uncomfortable with the setup: there is a nice vignette when she hangs around looking somewhat uncomfortable while Juan Antonio and María Elena make love off screen, as the voiceover notes acerbically. Eventually she can take no more and leaves. María Elena’s emotional waving about of a gun towards the end of the film sets up a similar position for Vicky, who is shot (but not seriously wounded) in the ensuing melee. It is this potential for violence and exaggerated emotion that finally persuades Vicky to back out of her relationship with Juan Antonio and settle for her marriage. How far is Cruz actually performing, acting out a stereotype or simply ‘naturally’ being herself as Spanish? Such a question runs the risk of being reductive and simplistic in terms of defining what

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natural Spanishness actually is, but what proves intriguing is the need felt by some critics to pose this question in the discourse surrounding her as star. Elements of the Spanish press certainly argued for Cruz’s performance as not only authentic but also as a seamless part of her wider star persona. Spanish critic Borja Hermoso sees her Oscar for the role as announcing her racial presence to the world, but nonetheless with a mixture of timidity and the aura of the good girl: his piece talks much of her modest home background (Hermoso, 2009). Some reviewers, however, showed a distaste for the film, although such distaste was often linked to the feeling of a personal stake in the film, of which the following quote is an example: Quizás será que tenemos tantas ganas de creernos que la película es buena, por estar rodada en nuestras tierras, que somos incapaces de ver la verdad? Sí. Sin ninguna duda, eso es lo que nos pasa. Triste pero cierto. (Caballería, 2008: italics in original) (Perhaps it’s that we so want to believe that the film is good, because it was filmed in our country, that we are incapable of seeing the truth? Yes. No doubt about it, that’s what’s going on. Sad but true.)

However, this was contradicted by a reviewer in El mundo who thought that the film was typical Allen and disputed the assumption that because of Spanish involvement the film had to be worse (Bermejo, 2008). Not incidentally, the same review complemented the ‘fuerza racial’ or ‘racial power’ that Cruz demonstrated. There has previously been a certain amount of resistance to the stereotype of the fiery and sexualised Spanish woman: film versions of the Carmen story made during the Franco dictatorship (such as Carmen, la de Triana, discussed above) notably rewrote Carmen’s story to make her more self-sacrificial, giving up her own chance of personal happiness and in one case even her life for the good of Spain. We are a long way removed from those times with Vicky Cristina, yet there is still some

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concern that Cruz plays an authentically Spanish woman (whatever that might be) rather than simply conforming to a stereotype. The anxiety over authenticity did not concern anglophone critics nearly so much, who focused far more on Cruz’s ability to dominate any scene in which she appeared. Bradshaw, for instance, argues that the two American women were ‘effortlessly upstaged by Penélope Cruz’ and that Cruz, along with Bardem, utterly blow the Americans away. Cruz looks as if she has wandered in from a more hefty film entirely; everything she does and says seems to mean more, count for more. This isn’t to say that she gets bigger laughs, or perhaps any laughs, but she certainly walks off with the film. Both the Spanish players have an easy presence and forthright energy, in comparison with which Hall and Johansson are slightly subdued and off the beat. (Bradshaw, 2009a)

James Wolcott agrees, though his praise is fainter: in a scathing review of Vicky Cristina he finds Cruz the best thing in the film, but argues that her Oscar for the role was ‘an act of generosity on the voters’ part’. Cruz is ‘bristling, tempestuous, and alive (with racoon eyes and a sharp little bite)’, but it does not require much effort on her part to be the best thing in the film (Wolcott, 2009). It is debateable the extent to which both reviewers feel that Cruz is actively performing as opposed to simply being herself once again: their emphasis on the effortlessness of her dominance might imply the latter, though it could alternatively suggest that she gives a performance that appears effortless and is the better actor for that. Bradshaw’s view that both Spanish actors offer more energetic turns, despite Bardem’s quite muted role in which his best lines are in Spanish rather than English, conflates Bardem and Cruz into an assumption of natural Spanishness, in which they are more relaxed than Bradshaw’s uptight Americans. Cruz’s Spanishness is further perceived in stereotypical Mediterranean terms when Wolcott talks of her role as a ‘cultural cliché’, with passion, temper and arguments

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‘out of a Latin lovers playbook’ (ibid.), a point also noted by Rob Mackie (2009) when he describes Cruz’s role as ‘little more than a Spanish spitfire stereotype’. Yet although Wolcott, for one, can spot a stereotype, he is not above reproducing them in using animal imagery to describe Cruz’s performance. We have already seen his comparison of her to a racoon with sharp teeth, but he goes on to describe her as ‘vixenishly funny’ (Wolcott, 2009: italics in original), perpetuating an association between southern Europeans and primitive, animalistic behaviour that is not without its dangers (such as sharp teeth). Danger is also an element touched on in the online comments of Phillegitimate (2010) in an article intriguingly titled ‘On How Penelope Cruz is Not Realistic’ (a statement that is never clearly demonstrated). The article notes that ‘Cruz is Europe, the older woman, uncompromising and dominant. She is a true femme fatale, as dangerous to herself as to anyone else around her, including her director (whose stable of muses she was added to after this, her only appearance in any of his films) and her audience’ (Phillegitimate, 2010: we should note that Cruz has since appeared in another Allen film, To Rome With Love, 2012). The perception of Cruz as femme fatale suggests an inevitable and inexorable danger that is, thus, natural and not deliberately performed, emphasised when María Elena brandishes her gun. We should also note, however, the association of fatale-ity with Spanishness. Thus, for both Spanish and anglophone critics, Cruz’s performance revolves around questions of Spanish stereotyping and otherness, but for the former there is an additional anxiety in such positioning and a desire (not always realised) to vindicate themselves as offering a Spanish authenticity. Chris Perriam (2013) observes that, in a way, María Elena becomes the ultimate object to be looked at in a city, Barcelona, full of tourist sites that can be and, indeed, in this film are lovingly photographed. Allen took advantage of the blandishments of regional governments with an eye to tourism, to film in their cities: thus Vicky Cristina takes in Barcelona’s usual tourist sites and suggests the

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María Elena: from subject to object

pleasures of Oviedo as well for good measure. If María Elena enters the film to take control of the relationship between Cristina and Juan Antonio, then Cristina gets her revenge by turning María Elena from active subject to the passive object of Cristina’s camera. Cristina also photographs local prostitutes, with whom María Elena becomes virtually equated since she strikes similar poses to them. This suggests an orientalising process not so different from Gautier’s earlier comments, but it also points to Spain’s own stake in this orientalisation, as there is implicit Spanish connivance in it, through the hopes of the regional governments to promote tourism – hence the anxiety we observed among Spanish critics for the film to be good. Cruz embodies this process, her star persona coalescing at the point where Spain connives in and exploits its status as exotic Other for America. Perriam argues that Cruz knowingly plays up to the fiery stereotype of the Spanish woman even while she also perpetuates it. Thus, her performance of the exotic Other is by implication selfaware and possibly ironic: it benefits herself and offers the possibility that the Spanish can pastiche or parody stereotypes for their own profit. The possible irony and self-awareness of Cruz’s performance

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are not quite enough to compensate for her embodiment of this objectification, any more than the award of the Oscar for the role does. Nonetheless, the fact that her performance is recognised as having more life and more relish than that of the ultimately blander Americans shows that the Other is ultimately more interesting, more vibrant. If on screen Vicky and Cristina leave Barcelona defeated and deflated, off screen Cruz triumphs over the rest of the cast and so in the end has the last laugh on the hegemony of American actors and American vices. Language becomes evidence of this triumph. If Juan Antonio constantly urges María Elena to speak in English for Cristina’s benefit, her frequent sliding between English and Spanish (into which Juan Antonio is drawn, despite himself) suggests that she has the dominance of language and control of conversations. Cruz’s ability to work in both, even though her English is still heavily accented, allows her to establish a little distance from earlier accusations that her English is not quite good enough for standard Hollywood fare. Although some alibi for her accent is usually provided in films (though not always, as Gothika [2003] demonstrates, for example), here her passionate speeches in Spanish offer her a better impact on delivery of dialogue when compared with the laconic tones of the American voices and, above all, that of Welch’s voiceover. Her dialogue in either language was quite simply the most interesting, and Cruz delivered it with relish. She paralleled her on-screen linguistic triumph with her Oscar acceptance speech, which included the obligatory phrase in their own language for foreign Oscar winners. David Parkinson, on the Guardian film blog, did not think the Oscar such a success for Cruz, arguing that nonanglophone actors could not really compete with anglophone ones because ‘leading roles are best left to English speakers’, hence Cruz was awarded only for a supporting role. (It is worth noting, though, that many of the responses on the blog did not agree with Parkinson’s argument: Parkinson, 2009.) We could, nonetheless,

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perceive Cruz’s Oscar award in terms of a personal triumph. After a reputation for being, in Parkinson’s words, ‘eye-candy with an impenetrable accent’ as far as the Hollywood industry was concerned, she has crossed the language barrier by means of a performance in which much of the pleasure is derived from her delivery of dialogue, in two languages. If Spanish actors still connive in their own ‘othering’, the wavering line between whether Cruz is acting or simply being herself serves to put into doubt the validity of preconceived ideas about southern Europeans. While performances of a Spanish Other serve, to some extent, to reinforce the clichés, the awareness that Spanish actors are actively adopting them as a deliberate strategy serves to undermine them. Anglophone audiences can never ultimately resolve whether actors such as Cruz are being true to stereotyped otherness, thus proving the accuracy of the stereotypes, or pandering to anglophone expectations but for their own ends, while simultaneously showing such expectations to be wanting. The concern in both films with how Spaniards see themselves can be seen in the desire of La niña to rewrite history, as well as concerns over successfully authentic representation of Spanishness in Vicky Cristina, concerns that point to an underlying cultural preoccupation as to how Spaniards see themselves and are seen by others. These films suggest an ability to play successfully with Spanish stereotypes while nonetheless implying the dangers of being objectified from outside. The danger of objectification for Cruz is what we will explore in the next chapter.

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3 PERFORMING OTHERNESS

This chapter considers Cruz as international star, picking up on the debate already introduced in the previous chapter, but going on to look, first, at her function as Hispanic American in Hollywood films as one that entails a potentially reductive conflation of Spain and Latin America into a crude Hispanicness. It then moves on to look more closely at the performance of a Mediterranean identity in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin before considering the question of foreignness embedded in a more general portrayal of woman as Other in both Abre los ojos and its remake Vanilla Sky. In the latter film it is primarily her foreignness that positions her as object, although the increasing circulation of rumours about her romantic life off screen and her reputation as an exotic femme fatale that broke up a celebrity marriage also contributes to this. Indeed, these rumours stressed still further her position as an outsider in anglophone film-making. Cruz has formed part of a wider trend towards inclusion of Hispanic and Latino actors in American films: the roles they play, however, are nearly always as Hispanic characters. This conflation of Hispanic identities has become prevalent in the last ten years but it is not new: to give just one example, an earlier 1950s screen icon of Spain, Sara Montiel, played a Mexican woman in the Hollywood Western Vera Cruz (1954). Cruz herself has managed to get beyond this simplistic equation and has played roles in which her nationality

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(often unspecified) becomes incidental: for example, Gothika, or the execrable, if star-studded, Noel (2004). Cruz has played these roles because she is a well-known actor and not because she comes from a Hispanic stable of stars. Nonetheless, Cruz has also played the obligatory Latino roles in films such as Woman on Top, The Hi-Lo Country (1998), All the Pretty Horses (2000) and Bandidas. A notable example in this group of films is Demme’s Blow, made as part of a tranche of films that brought Cruz to international prominence, released in the same year as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Vanilla Sky; these films serve to entrench the notion of foreignness firmly within Cruz’s persona. Deborah Shaw has noted Demme’s reason for the casting of Cruz and fellow Spaniard Jordi Mollà in the film as being because they were ‘Latin’ rather than specifically Spanish. Yet no Latin Americans were cast in major roles in a film that, nonetheless, has many scenes set in Latin America. This casting, Shaw argues, combines exoticism with safety: Spanish actors are foreign but more western in looks (Shaw, 2007, p. 32). Shaw’s discussion of Blow, and of Cruz’s role within it, neatly encapsulates the potential for reductiveness in being cast to play Hispanic. Cruz plays Mirtha, the Columbian second wife of drug dealer George (Johnny Depp); and although George is already an established drug dealer at the point when they first meet, Mirtha is the woman who appears to lead him astray. She is wild (dressed in red, suggesting her danger), fast and fond of cocaine, but as time goes by her hysteria and craziness become more pronounced. She leads to George’s imprisonment through insisting on a party attended by drug dealers which is duly raided by police. When George skips bail, her frenzied demands for sex during a car journey, suggesting the insatiable appetite of the foreign woman, leads to an accident and George’s rearrest. There is a strong contrast with blonde and balanced Barbara, George’s previous fiancée. Shaw notes that the actor taking the role of this American woman is, in fact, German (Franka Potente), but does not push further the

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obvious contrast between the blonde woman (suggesting white perfection and good sense) and the darker European/Latin American (suggesting something savage and dangerous). Mirtha is implicitly blamed for George’s downfall and loss of his daughter, who never visits him in prison (ibid., p. 36). Shaw argues that this blatant stereotyping has been deliberately added to the film and does not derive from the biography on which the film is based (pp. 37–8). She concludes that the Latin Americans, Mirtha and Diego (Mollà), ‘come to represent cocaine itself: all three are initially exciting, bring glamour, wealth and fun, yet lead to danger, the loss of control and the loss of freedom’ (p. 39). This suggests the attraction and threat that Latin Americans pose to North Americans. Cruz’s persona takes on this suggestion of the Hispanic as primitive, irrational and histrionic even though seductive, a threat to the sense and rationality of anglophones. She proves doubly dangerous through being both foreign and female (in a film that is more generally misogynistic: all the women in George’s life let him down in some way or other). Thus Cruz’s positioning as a threat to the anglophone celebrity marriage of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman becomes even clearer. In 2008, this notion of the Hispanic as dangerous would still inflect Cruz as star even when she is back to being specifically Spanish and the Cruise relationship was well behind her: in Vicky Cristina Barcelona she still poses a threat to Americans when wielding a gun in hysterical rage. The difficulty that the notion of Hispanicness can present is well illustrated by another example. Cruz has a cameo role in the film Sex and the City 2: The Movie (2010), which caused debate on an American blog called Racialicious, a blog about ‘the intersection of race and popular culture’ as its home page and tagline proclaims. Sex and the City 2 garnered a fair amount of criticism on Racialicious for its negative treatment of matters to do with race, which can come as no surprise to anyone who has watched the film; but the original blogger had this to say about Cruz:

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the people of color in the SATC universe are only here to serve white people. The only exception is the fabulous Penelope Cruz, who makes a cameo as the fly President of the Bank of Madrid, and captures Big’s attention. (Peterson, 2010)

The film stresses Cruz’s exotic sexual allure rather than the banking capabilities of her character; but the original blogger’s comment came in for a fascinating debate as to whether or not Cruz is a person of colour. While quite a few bloggers were keen to assert that Cruz, being Spanish, was also white (itself a problematic definition of Spanish nationality), bound up in the debate was the very possibility of Hispanic identity as non-white and specifically Spanish nationality submerged beneath a Hispanic ethnicity marked as distinct from an implicitly white American norm. The debate flared up again when the blog reacted to coverage on the Fox News channel of the birth of Cruz and Bardem’s son, born in the USA. Fox News described the child as an ‘anchor baby’, that is, a child born in the USA to Hispanic immigrants that allows the parents the right to stay in the USA. In other words, Fox News was implicitly treating Cruz and Bardem as ‘no better’ than Latino immigrants, insulting both to the couple and to Latin American immigrants more widely in such a reductive view of them (Rivas, 2010). We can perceive from these incidents that Cruz’s status as Hispanic leads to a stereotyped view which seems, at times, to trump even her star status. Nonetheless, Cruz has also been able to draw – more, if not totally, benignly – on ideas about the Mediterranean, since Spain is a Mediterranean country. Following the success of Cinema Paradiso, which became an international hit, there were efforts to repeat the success with warm, nostalgic films set in Mediterranean countries during the mid-twentieth century, such as Il postino (1994) and Mediterraneo. Such films combined romance and humour, but sometimes also included elements of melodrama and, if set in the appropriate time, references to World War II or other conflicts. Cruz

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had herself, of course, previously appeared in just such a film, Belle Époque, whose Oscar success brought it and her to greater prominence. Cruz thus seemed an appropriate person to play the central female role of Pelagia in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Corelli aimed to benefit more widely from this vein of film-making. Although the Mediterranean stereotype shares similar characteristics with the Hispanic and Latin (unsurprisingly, since they overlap), it is more benign in that no threat is posed to anglophone countries and, above all, the USA through drugs, criminality or immigration, and is softened still further by the emphasis on the past and on nostalgia. Mediterranean people become simple peasants, passionate and fiery like their Hispanic counterparts, but also comic and lovable.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin This film is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Louis de Bernières, one of the few literary adaptations Cruz has appeared in to date. As a literary adaptation Captain Corelli’s Mandolin unsurprisingly lays claim to the high-level production values commonly expected of adaptations, a more diffuse form of the Merchant-Ivory effect, with its emphasis on glossy depictions of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anglophones often out of their depth abroad. Such film-making has produced its own stars, above all Helena Bonham-Carter. Cruz does not bear the same marker of high-quality heritage film-making even now, and she certainly did not at the time of being cast for the female lead in Corelli. She was at this time, however, already developing a reputation for playing Hispanic or Latin roles, thus acquiring a thread in her persona of playing foreign roles that did not specify her real nationality. And while Cruz does not have a strong association with literary adaptations, she already had some experience of heritage and nostalgia film, as her work in Belle Époque and La niña de tus ojos has

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already demonstrated and as she would continue to demonstrate both at home, with historical dramas such as Volavérunt, and abroad in films such as Head in the Clouds (2004), set in France towards the onset of the Nazi invasion. The story of Corelli is set on the Greek island of Cephalonia during World War II and the Italian occupation. Italian Captain Corelli (Nicolas Cage) is billeted at the house of the local doctor (John Hurt) and his daughter Pelagia (Cruz). Pelagia is engaged to Mandras (Christian Bale), a resistance fighter who only visits her at infrequent intervals. Pelagia is initially hostile to Corelli and resentful of his presence in her home, but after he publicly declares his love for her by playing a song on his mandolin composed especially for her and bearing her name, she succumbs and returns his love. They are, however, overtaken by events: the Italians have surrendered to the Allies elsewhere. The Germans on Cephalonia insist that the Italian army troops surrender their weapons, but instead the Italians fight the Germans, on the side of the resistance. Defeated, the Italian troops led by Corelli are subsequently shot: Corelli survives because one of his men shields him from the gunfire with his own body. Later, Mandras finds him and brings him to Pelagia and her father to be patched up, but the recuperated Captain can no longer stay on the island, as the Germans are rounding up pockets of resistance. After he has left for Italy the war ends. Pelagia takes up work as a doctor but remains melancholy without him. Eventually, however, Corelli returns to Cephalonia to find her. Corelli is often seen by critics as an unsuccessful film (for example, Bradshaw, 2001) and one of the key films that go to make up Cruz’s reputation as not in the first rank of stars, quite simply because she has not appeared in a string of box-office successes. Nonetheless, the film repays study within Cruz’s repertoire, primarily because of its contribution to her star persona as exotic, but also more pragmatically because this was the first time she held a star position in a strong international cast, playing opposite Cage, Hurt

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and Bale, who all had established reputations as headline names. Unlike Vanilla Sky, where Cruz acts in the shadow of Tom Cruise above all but also to some extent Cameron Diaz, even though the latter’s role is a supporting one, here in Corelli her status is equal to that of her co-stars. It suggests Cruz’s ability to hold her own alongside other A-list stars independent of any off-screen relationship that would suggest an unfair advantage in securing roles. Not that this stopped romantic speculation about her, as we shall shortly see. However, the perception of Corelli as a flop appears to go against all this status, so that her abiding association with this film does not result in a clear indication of her own A-list status, but the idea that she is incapable of starring in Hollywood hits (see White, 2010, quoted in the introduction). This coincides with her Hollywood foreignness to suggest that this very foreignness is a contributory factor: the stain of Corelli does not weigh quite so heavily on Cage, Hurt and Bale, but they are anglophone actors with established reputations even though Cage has Italian American connections through the famous Coppola film family of which he forms a part. Corelli is one film used as evidence that Cruz cannot quite cut it in Hollywood. Success or failure are, of course, relative terms: Cruz was, by this time, already outstripping her status back home in Spain even if in Spain her A-list status was, by this point, assured. Her Hollywood cause was not helped by the interest in her offscreen life as opposed to any ability to act alongside top-name actors. Rumours about Cruz’s romantic attachments at this time were rife (see, for example, Smith, 2001). Matt Damon denied rumours of a romance with Cruz, but said the lack of romance was only due to a lack of time on his part (‘Damon and Cruz Never Had the Time to Fall in Love’, 2000). Rumours about the relationship with Cruise also surfaced at this time, Cruise accompanying her to the film’s premiere: on the other hand, co-star of Corelli John Hurt defended Cruz from the charge of breaking up Cruise’s marriage to Kidman

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(‘John Hurt: Cruz is Just Cuddly’, 2001). Both Cage and Bale were said to be romantically interested in Cruz as well (Smith and Ponga 2001, p. 102; ‘Christian Bale Has Miserable Time on Captain Corelli’, 2000). Given that Cruz’s role in Corelli is to play the captain’s love interest, and that her international roles emphasise her function as an object of desire, there is a risk of conflating Cruz off screen with Cruz on screen. Cruz’s apparent habit of romantic involvement with her leading men makes it harder to separate out actual acting and performance on screen. Thus, she can potentially be seen less as an actor and more as a beautiful and attractive woman who has simply to be. The question of simply being oneself on screen as opposed to acting is also raised by the matter of voicing. Corelli faces a common problem in that it is an anglophone film with an expectation of English dialogue, yet not only are the characters implicitly speaking in languages other than English, they speak languages that other characters cannot necessarily understand. The result is that all the characters speak English with a heavy foreign accent, with a few details to demonstrate that English is, in fact, standing in for another language. For instance, the island tavern regulars listen to reports on the war on the BBC World Service, given in English, but early on the doctor provides a translation to indicate that the rest of the clientele know no English (and yet, ironically, the translation is given in Hurt’s accented English). Likewise, Corelli, who apparently knows Greek, is called on to translate the comic defiance of the town hall when the Italian army take over the island. Yet, from then on, Italians, Greeks and Germans speak freely in heavily accented English as a lingua franca. Chris Perriam (2005, p. 40) observes that the inauthentic accents in the film, including Cruz’s, enable the characters to become ‘idealizations of difference’, but, on the whole, an indifferent difference which enables Italians and Greeks to be equated as generically Mediterranean. The reason why voice and accents matter for us here is that the principal male actors are themselves

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Cruz and Irene Papas in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001): voices from ‘home’

anglophone, from Britain and the USA, and are therefore deliberately adopting this way of speaking. They are performing ‘foreign’ and thus not being themselves. The deliberate performance is heightened by the fact that Cage adopts a notably Italian cast to his accent while David Morrissey as Gunther gives a German note to his accent: thus, the men aim to distinguish nationality through voice performance. Such deliberate performances did not convince everyone: the Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, for one, commented scathingly on all the accents bar Hurt’s, and criticised Cruz but more gently than the male actors (Bradshaw, 2001). However, the suggestion of voice as performance does not apply to the main female characters, of which there are only two: Pelagia and Mandras’s mother Drosoula, played by veteran Greek actor Irene Papas. Both Cruz and Papas are from Mediterranean countries and the latter is actually Greek, yet despite the fact that both are playing characters from ‘home’, unlike the men, they are speaking in what to them is a foreign language. Therefore, while we should not denigrate the effort in playing such a large role in a language that is not your own (and Cruz is on screen for a very large proportion of the film), it is also clear that Cruz is using her own voice and not adopting a performance in quite the same way the men are. This too, however, fails to acknowledge Cruz’s efforts to speak

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English, and the work she has put into improving her English, as she avows in an interview given during the making of Corelli (Smith, 2001). She also recognised, however, the value of maintaining her Spanish accent because she felt it gave her more opportunities for roles (Ángulo, 2001). The implication that Cruz is seen in a different way from the other actors precisely because of her status as from a Mediterranean country is made clearer from the DVD commentary supplied by the director John Madden. The bulk of Madden’s commentary does not, in fact, deal with the actors at all but focuses lyrically on the landscape of Cephalonia. This, in itself, has resonance for Cruz’s role in the film, as she spends a great deal of time in the film roaming about the landscape. Quite often Madden comments about the landscapes and not his leading actress as she traverses it, which in itself is indicative. He also stresses the importance of Pelagia’s home as one where one is always aware of the outside spaces, but where she also has power (particularly over Corelli himself). That is to say, Madden is gesturing towards a measure of subjectivity for Pelagia/Cruz, though her subjectivity is subordinate to his attention to the landscape: it is not Pelagia that holds his attention but the space she occupies, a position which does much to reduce the power of her subjectivity. Although much of the initial action of the film is seen from her point of view, Corelli comes to occupy that position in the heart of the film, in a move parallel to his invasion of her home and his country’s invasion of her island. Nonetheless, Madden’s comments concerning Pelagia being at home remind us of the fact that Cruz herself is not, in a sense, at home: she is Spanish and this is Greece, and yet an easy equation can be made between the different parts of the Mediterranean with each other. One Mediterranean place comes to seem much like another and, therefore, someone from the region will, on this supposition, feel at home in any part of it. Thus, Cruz is in her ‘natural’ habitat and as such she cannot be thought to be actively performing.

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Moreover, Cruz becomes, like the Greek landscape, an exotic object to be looked at (a motif we saw in Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Madden frequently comments on the beauty of the location and has an eye to its detail, remarking on the ruins littering the terrain that testify to the original conflict being recreated in Corelli. Cruz, if she is at home in such landscape, becomes one more thing of beauty in the landscape, simply to be looked at. This, in turn, gives a new slant to Corelli’s position, as both he and we become holders of this gaze, staring in rapture (like Madden) at the breathtaking landscape and at the same time the beautiful woman fixed within it. This again renders Pelagia/Cruz as object rather than subject of the gaze, and blurs the specificity of Cruz’s nationality into a fuzzy Mediterraneanness as exotic. This surrender of subjectivity will parallel Pelagia’s increasing surrender to Corelli himself. What Madden does say about Cruz as actor, compared to other actors is also revealing. He talks, for instance, of the authenticity of Nicolas Cage’s performance: it is Cage’s own voice singing opera with the captain’s men in one of the early sequences, while Cage also learned to play the mandolin for the film. In comparison, the first time Madden talks of Cruz’s performance, it is not performing as such he refers to but quite simply the shape of her head. Over the shot of Mandras leaving Pelagia for the second time in order to fight in the resistance, Madden comments that she has a lovely profile and then, as the camera spans across the back of her head, he remarks that the back of her head is often more expressive than her face – but at this point all we see is a silhouette, suggesting not so much performance but that Cruz is merely offering a woman-shaped space. Thus, performance is not key to the director’s interpretation of her role so much as Cruz as an integral part of the landscape, which may be why he has her spend a significant proportion of her screen time simply wandering about the countryside. After Pelagia and Corelli consummate their love for the first time, her father talks to her about love while she listens with bowed head; and Madden comments that

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Cruz as an integral part of the landscape in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

a sense of shame, which he feels is something that has largely disappeared from the contemporary world, is something that Cruz was able easily to perform ‘because of her own background’. This might be true but at any event this is a reductive comment that again condenses the cultures of Mediterranean countries to an indistinguishable level, and also has the backhand implication that such shame may be desirable but is, nonetheless, a part of a less advanced culture. Cruz’s Madrid is not easily comparable to a small Greek island in the 1940s in cultural terms, but Madden’s suggestion that she will inevitably have more empathy for Greek customs conflates the cultures of two very different places. It also deflates any sense that Cruz actively performs, because it is implied that showing shame is something that comes more naturally to her than to others who do not share her background. Given these elements, it is hardly surprising that Cruz might be accused of simply looking beautiful rather than performing, since, arguably, the part does not offer much scope for acting at all. A certain amount of fire and passion can be detected in her work in the early exchanges with Corelli in which Pelagia declares her hostility towards him, but otherwise Cruz/Pelagia observes events passively, wanders round the countryside in an apparently aimless

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way and is an often mute and horrified witness to the violent conflict and severe reprisals that occur as the German forces increase their grip on power. It is certainly a role that offers little scope for the sparkier side of Cruz’s persona. A reviewer in Spanish film magazine Cinemanía felt that Cruz lacked ‘claws’ (C. M., 2001), suggesting a lack of spirit that contrasts with the animal imagery used to describe Cruz’s more lively performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, as we saw in the previous chapter. However, the dismissal of her performance here may arise from precisely her lack of conformity to preconceived ideas of what it means to act in a ‘Mediterranean’ way. Cruz, to my mind, plays a woman in love quite well, both when expressing Pelagia’s worry and tension over fiancé Mandras’s fate in the war and the later concern for Corelli. In both cases she shows a contained fear but her face shows melancholy, as, for instance, when she watches Mandras’s initial departure for the resistance and soon afterwards looks for information as to his survival. Her fears for her father in the earthquake at the end of the film are also played out in a restrained but clear fashion. Above all, through her restraint Cruz shows some nuances in her portrayal of melodramatic emotion: this role, as others before and after, calls on her to express suffering. Her performance here is certainly not up to the force of earlier European actresses such as Anna Magnani, to whom Cruz would subsequently be compared when she acted another role as melodramatic heroine, Raimunda in Volver. Nonetheless, we should beware of mistaking restraint for a lack of acting. Cruz is arguably making the best of a role that does not seem to interest the film’s director that much. Since Cruz is struggling against a very reductive vision of her role as a feminine Other, a Mediterranean woman who is set in contrast to both her fellow actors, who are deliberately assuming a performance of foreignness but also an implied anglophone audience distinct from Mediterranean cultures, we may wonder how much deliberate acting can be discerned in the playing of a stereotype. Playing Mediterranean may, in fact, be just as demanding as a

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performance that is more distinctive, but less easy to mark out as an original and thoughtful performance. We can compare Cruz as Pelagia to her role as María Elena in Vicky Cristina: Cruz’s work in the latter garnered not only more critical praise but also an Oscar. Her performance there was, as we shall see, more energetic but, for all that, no less stereotypical as a fiery Mediterranean, driven by passion, but it contrasted well with that of the other actors, which thus made her stand out. In Corelli she did not have such advantages. Corelli is, thus, a key film in Cruz’s career and the development of her persona but not for the right reasons: it provides a focus for a greater interest in her personal relationships than in her ability to act, and a perception that she was capable primarily of looking beautiful and playing herself but unable to provide anything more demanding. It may also perhaps imply that Cruz is dependent on the director to be actively involved in extracting a good performance from her: if Madden’s comments on the DVD commentary are indicative, he was clearly more concerned about producing a film that looked good than about getting his actress to act. Corelli is, however, also part of a more seamless career trajectory that builds on earlier aspects of her persona. Cruz is, for instance, once more playing a daughter and, as Madden himself notes on the commentary, the relationship between father and daughter is important to the film. We can observe that the love for each other expressed between the two is crucial to establishing Pelagia as a warm, sympathetic character – also vital to Cruz’s persona. She may be fiery, but (as with other characters she plays) once more her fire derives from her positive passions and personal desires: although she resents the Italian invasion and runs round the local village in a panic towards the end, when the Germans invade in their turn, her motivations have nothing to do with the political. This is, of course, one reason why Pelagia’s relationship with Corelli works out while her engagement to Mandras does not. Hence, although there is a tendency to objectivise Cruz through a perception of her as just another part of a very beautiful landscape,

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she continues to be an actor associated with subjective personal desires that inspire passion.

Abre los ojos/Vanilla Sky If the previous films we have considered in this chapter deal explicitly in the Other as foreign, then in Vanilla Sky the exotic Other is just one strand in a more general portrayal of woman as Other, passive, desirable and dangerous, that derives from the original film Abre los ojos. The plot of Abre los ojos centres on César (Eduardo Noriega), a well-off young man who falls in love with Sofía (Cruz), who arrives at his party in the company of his friend Pelayo (Fele Martínez). After César and Sofía spend the night talking at her flat he is hopeful of developing a relationship with her, but things go catastrophically awry when he is involved in a car crash, the car being driven by Núria (Najwa Nimri), who has been stalking him. César’s face is disfigured in the crash, but he fails to come to terms with the thought that his relationship with Sofía cannot continue as before. Miraculously, it appears, Sofía returns to him, but their life together is increasingly disturbed by his conviction that Núria is supplanting Sofía, until eventually he murders the woman he thinks is Núria. For this he is committed to a psychiatric unit but, with the help of his psychiatrist (Chete Lera), he comes to realise that he is actually living in a virtual dream world created by a company who have frozen his body with the promise of resuscitation in the future. The Sofía with whom he had a relationship is no more than a virtual character created by his own unconscious desire. For Amenábar’s previous film, Tesis, the producer wanted Cruz to play the leading role of a university student who uncovers a snuffmovie ring, but her commitment to another film eventually made this impossible and the role went to Ana Torrent, who as a child had starred in one of Spain’s greatest films of all time, El espíritu de la

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colmena (Spirit of the Beehive, 1973: Sempere, 2000, p. 65). In fact, the second-best choice proved to be the right one, since Torrent gives the role a wide-eyed fear suitable to the horror/thriller genre to which Tesis belongs. Cruz’s sparky and pert star persona does not lend itself well to such a role in which the expression of fear is paramount. Abre los ojos is a thriller rather than a slasher horror, playing with concepts of future times and virtual realities in a manner similar to The Matrix (1999) and its sequels and The Game (1997), and points to questions of ‘real’ humanity reminiscent of films such as Blade Runner (1982). It is arguably a form of sci-fi, but this is something that can only be appreciated after a first viewing, since, despite background references to cryogenics and freezing the body in the hope of resuscitation, the film does not overtly acknowledge the possibility of an alternative, virtual reality beyond a few background hints until some way on into the film (when César meets Duvernois [Gérard Barray], the representative of the cryogenics company). Films about virtual realities were new to Spanish cinema and arose from the increasingly commercial turn it was taking at this time, with a more explicit awareness of Spanish audiences raised on Hollywood fare. Cruz is thus associating herself with this more commercial fare and placing herself firmly in the stable of stars arising in the upsurge of new filmmaking: she is also, however, moving away from the emphasis on comedy roles and demonstrating an ability to act in films of other genres. Abre los ojos might seem to neglect questions of national identities with which we have been concerned hitherto in this chapter, but, as we shall see, these questions reappear obliquely both in this film and its remake Vanilla Sky. However, we need first to consider how far in these films Cruz can be said to be acting at all, or whether, in fact, her role is this film is simply to look pretty and smile. Sofía never displays any possibility of being a suffering or desiring subject but is simply an object of desire – and a fairly empty one. Cruz’s role as love interest is, above all, to represent an ideal woman, but this woman ultimately lacks

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Cruz as blank cipher in Abre los ojos (1997)

character and her role is little more than a cipher: all that matters is that she is desirable. It is perhaps no surprise that Cruz tried to render herself ‘blank’ when arriving on set. Sofía’s masks, her different roles, imply a lack of authentic identity which was paralleled by Cruz’s own efforts to become no more than a blank canvas (Stone, 2002, p. 202). Oti Rodríguez Marchante (2002) conducts a book-length interview with Amenábar concerning his first three films, in which the director speaks of his work with the actresses Torrent and Nicole Kidman (star of his third film The Others, 2001), talking of his interactions with them and how their professional experience contributed to the process of making these two films. Cruz, however, is barely mentioned in this regard, suggesting that the question of acting and professional experience simply did not arise. One of the few times that Cruz is referred to in the interview is when Amenábar comments that Cruz was very important to the role of Sofía because she had the necessary magic quality for people to fall in love with her very quickly. Rodríguez Marchante immediately picks up on this to ask about the effect the film had on Tom Cruise, who was the force behind the later American remake and who

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became romantically linked to Cruz at about the same time. Amenábar replies that Cruise asked his opinion on Cruz and whether she was easy to work with, a question that Amenábar does not himself answer here (ibid., pp. 69–70). This exchange suggests that desirability and not performance is perceived to be the key to Cruz’s work in the film. The reference to Cruz’s powers of enchantment calls to the interviewer’s mind the star’s romance with Cruise, while Amenábar has nothing to say about Cruz’s acting. Anne White, in reference to the parallel role in Vanilla Sky, observes the negative reaction of critics to Cruz’s performance. Some noted her problems with English, but others commented on her insipid performance, arguing that all she does is look beautiful. Strongly implied in this is a lack of acting or performance. White suggests that ‘It could be argued that even in Abre los ojos the character of Sofía Serrano is important only in so far as she serves as the catalyst for the tragic events that will change César’s life forever,’ thus implying this goes even more for Vanilla Sky (White, 2003, p. 191). Stone describes Cruz’s performance in Abre los ojos as one of ‘calm and confident femininity’, which counters the masculine fragility of César (Stone, 2002, p. 201), but this may arise from a fairly simple positioning of her character as an attractive woman over whom an unequal contest develops between the handsome César and his friend Pelayo, who has more mundane looks. Sofía simply becomes a prize to be won. Her own feelings about the two men are not only irrelevant but are also rather opaque. After a while, of course, her expressed feelings and desires are simply those given to her by César in his virtual world. Nonetheless, to some degree the splice between the real and virtual world does not matter, because the Sofía we see is no more than a reflection of César’s own desires: to him she is an idealised dream object even before he starts dreaming. What seems to precipitate César into his dream world is the realisation that, after his accident, the real Sofía does have feelings of unease and repulsion towards him, and he believes that

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she rejects him in favour of Pelayo, the one who ultimately wins the prize. The second half of the film is taken up with César’s virtual world, although we do not realise this until towards the end of the film. In this world Sofía is like a doll to manipulate: the virtual Sofía not only becomes more accepting of César’s disfigurement, but actually apologises to him for her earlier attitude, thus placing herself in a less powerful position. Yet César’s looks are miraculously returned to what they were, so he wins either way – he is loved for himself and not his looks, but he still profits from the latter. Stone’s reference to calm and confident femininity can therefore be reinterpreted to mean the sort of femininity that César wants and is in a position to get, as opposed to the needy and demanding femininity of somebody like Núria. Women traditionally have been perceived, above all, in terms of their gender before any other characteristics, such as nationality. In parallel, the refashioning of women becomes a virtually universal characteristic beyond performing nation. Amenábar instructed Cruz to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), in which a woman is also fashioned to become the object of the man’s desire, in order to prepare for the role (ibid., p. 202). Marit Knollmueller notes Cruz’s link to Kim Novak, who plays Madeleine, the ideal woman for the protagonist Scottie (James Stewart) in Vertigo. César refashions Sofía in his virtual world much as Scottie refashions the woman he encounters in the street to be his much desired Madeleine again: Knollmueller labels this as ‘resurrection’. She argues that the Hitchcock references suggest a film that looks away from a Spanish tradition (Knollmueller, 2009, p. 204). In Vanilla Sky, on the other hand, the Spanishness of Sofía becomes a noted marker of difference and exoticism, while nonetheless retaining the sense of Sofía as little more than a cipher: if she remains an object of desire to be refashioned by this particular protagonist, David Aames (Tom Cruise), David clearly likes to add foreign otherness into the mix. The retention of the nationality may

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simply allow continuity to Cruz’s accented English, and her specifically Spanish nationality is more tenuous as opposed to sheer foreignness. In Abre los ojos a hint of foreign exoticism lies with Núria, played by Najwa Nimri of Basque/Jordanian descent. Núria’s heavy kohl-rimmed eyes (a trademark of Nimri) and her easternlooking sheath dress with high mandarin collar underscore the element of exoticism still further, so that her descent into suicidal passion, a stereotypical hallmark of women perceived as foreign, comes as no surprise. In Vanilla Sky, however, the equivalent role is played by Cameron Diaz as Julie, with her blonde, clean American look and talk of chicken soup. Julie’s suicidal driving appears more sympathetic than Núria’s, since she is not imbued with an aura of the femme fatale: her unrequited love is sympathetic and pitiful rather than predatory. Exoticism is therefore transferred to Cruz as Sofía, whose nationality differs from those around her. Sofía is, on one level, simply a space within which male desire can operate: on another level, however, the space is clearly embodied by the particularity of Cruz. In Vanilla Sky that space takes on a foreign and exotic cast, in the contrast between the sultry Cruz and the blonde, clinging Diaz (see Naughten, 2010). Many of the shots of Vanilla Sky serve to separate Cruz out from other people and set her apart. At the party, for instance, there are many more shots of her on her own without Brian (Jason Lee, the equivalent role to Pelayo) or David (in contrast to Abre los ojos), emphasising the exchange of looks between Sofía and David but also of her as slightly adrift and apart from the other party guests. This initial presentation of Sofía as separate and thus out of reach is reinforced by the use of Spanish. The odd Spanish word thrown into her speech emphasises the Spanish accent with which she speaks the English dialogue. At the point at which David is supposed to take off the mask after surgery, she reverts to whole Spanish sentences when in a temper because he is delaying the moment of removal. After the restoration of his face, the couple join Brian in a bar: Sofía talks in

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The softer side of Cruz in Vanilla Sky (2001)

Spanish to David as they playfully embrace, but when Brian later asks David what she said he smiles and says he has no idea. On the one hand, the charm of an incomprehensible language merely adds to her desirability. On the other hand, she does not always understand the conversation between David and Brian, lightly stressing her foreignness. Added to the hint of exoticism through shooting and language is the suggestion of Sofía as childlike and unworldly, different to the sophistication of New York. In the conversation with David in her flat she wonders if he finds her naive, and, in voiceover, in conversation with the psychiatrist, he says he had found the last semi-guileless girl in New York. Her childlike nature is emphasised by costume, such as the coats at the party and on top of the tower, that make Cruz/Sofía look smaller, softer and more vulnerable than she actually is. At times the Sofía of Vanilla Sky can be irritatingly winsome, playing peekaboo with her sketch pad as she draws David. White comments that ‘When Cruz’s character is … read as a postmodern pastiche constructed from quotations of femininity lifted from popular Hollywood films and European arthouse cinema, her blandness and superficiality become inevitable’

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(2003, p. 192), particularly in Vanilla Sky as David is reconstructing his ideal woman from popular culture references. Nonetheless, the note of Europeanness should be taken into account as a light trace of exoticism that enhances her appeal as compared to Julie. White cites director Crowe’s mention of Audrey Hepburn and French New Wave heroines as templates for Cruz’s role (p. 191): Hepburn, in particular, suggests a soft, gamine quality that is different but which is also safe. Nonetheless, a foreign nationality also carries with it the potential for malignity, suggested in some rather reductive ideas about women, but also the fact that even the illusory ideal woman carries the possibility of hurting the male. Sofía initially contrasts strongly to Núria/Julie, the other woman in César’s/David’s life who proves that subjective desire is needy, clingy and downright dangerous, since she causes the accident that renders him disfigured. Yet, in the virtual reality, César/David continually confuses the two and fears that Núria/Julie has returned and is imitating Sofía, despite protestations to the contrary from her and from others. This reflects a subconscious fear that women are, in fact, all alike, equally untrustworthy and thus equally dangerous. César/David fears that somehow women will ultimately elude his control, despite the biddable ideal woman he appears to have created in his mind. Thus, the ideal woman is still a woman with the capacity to be, as Stone has it, ‘the girl of César’s nightmares’ rather than his dreams (2002, p. 202). The ambivalence over Cruz’s position across the two roles chimes with the underlying misogyny of the films in which, ultimately, all women are seen as potentially castrating. Although Sofía, in both films, is marked out as an ideal woman in contrast to Núria/Julie, César’s/David’s subconscious habit of blurring the two women in his mind strongly suggests an inability to distinguish. All women are potentially hurtful and dangerous: if Núria/Julie threatens his life and disfigures him, Sofía in Abre los ojos rejects him precisely because of his disfigurement, which she cannot handle, unable to

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look at him in the park and in the nightclub until he forces her to it. She thus adds insult to injury. The Sofía who accepts César as he is, disfigured face and all, only exists in the virtual reality he has manufactured for himself. It is noticeable that the first manufactured memory that César has after the splice between his past life and his virtual life, is of Sofía waking him up as he lies in the gutter and begging his forgiveness. The blankness that Cruz brings to this role in both films simply enhances this fear of women. She becomes a blank canvas on which César can outline his own fears and desires, but there is no sense in which Sofía has any subjectivity beyond any that César bestows on her in his dreams. She only ever reacts to him. This suspicion is highlighted further in the case of Vanilla Sky because this film was very much Tom Cruise’s project, and Cruise was romantically linked to Cruz at the time. It is underscored still further, if obliquely, by Amenábar’s comments on the Kim Novak characters in Vertigo, who do not interest him particularly because they simply represent an emotion for the male protagonist (Rodríguez Marchante, 2002, p. 81). Yet that emotion can be fear as well as desire. The potential malign nature, the power to castrate, formed a part of Cruz’s role in Jamón jamón, but there, even if men fought over her, she had a certain level of agency. Here Sofía has a castrating power through her simple existence, but also because the male protagonist has desire as well as fear for such a woman. He must create her and, having done so, he struggles to control his creation. Just as Cruz is beginning to become a fully fledged star at home and come into greater prominence abroad she is drawn into a position of objectification, something to be looked at, found beautiful and used as the fuel for the imagination in which the woman/star can be refigured in different behaviours and thoughts to suit the purposes of the one doing the imagining. Yet the danger of castration is very much a part of the mix: there is always the fear of losing control of the object. We should note that in the scene where David/César and

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Sofía exchange drawings, David/César draws her without highlighting any defects, as if she were perfect, again stressing his vision of her as an ideal, notably in contrast to the comic caricature she produces of him. This perception of her is, however, an ideal that he fails to recreate once he is locked away, crushing or scribbling over the sheets of paper on which he attempts to recapture the image he once drew so confidently (see Naughten, 2010). The references to Sofía’s Spanish nationality, alongside Cruz’s off-screen romance with Tom Cruise, come into play here. Cruz was seen as the catalyst that broke up the celebrity marriage of Cruise with Nicole Kidman (who would, ironically, be the protagonist of Amenábar’s next film, The Others): although Kidman was herself ‘foreign’ (Australian), she was anglophone and blonde, thus a contrast to Cruz that is paralleled in a comparison between the characters of Julie and Sofía in Vanilla Sky. Spanishness in Abre los ojos is emphasised through its very absence, the fact that it is taken for granted; but in Vanilla Sky the on-screen role combines with the rumours of off-screen romance and the notion of Cruz as the ‘other woman’ that suggest Spanishness/foreignness as dangerous and castrating. Cruz’s deliberate blankness becomes a canvas on which nationality can be written or not, as the desiring subject pleases. Thus, in contrast to La niña de tus ojos, which stressed the performance of Spanishness as deliberate, the two films here allow a space in which performance is deliberately withheld in order to allow the subject or the viewer (implicitly male) to fill in the blank as he sees fit. Cruz has simply to be, to be present on screen; but even the passive space she occupies still has malign potential that resonates beyond the film itself. This, perhaps, may be why one of the changes in the remake was to soften Sofía in some respects as a counter-balance, in keeping with the European lack of guile that David prizes. In the original Abre los ojos the choice that Sofía appears to exercise is in the first half of the film merely a reflex action of choosing good looks and wealth. When César becomes disfigured Sofía appears to prefer Pelayo (since

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Cruz as mime artist in Abre los ojos

he is now the better-looking man) and cannot bear even to look at César’s distorted features. She comes across as shallow, a point Amenábar further emphasises by the use of her white mime make-up when she is performing in the park, which melts away in the rain simply to reveal Sofía’s discomfort at the newly ugly César. Women appear to have no loyalties – simply a fickle preference for the bestlooking man. The Sofía of Vanilla Sky seems more relaxed around the disfigured David and has no problems looking at him. At the nightclub bar she initially seems uncomfortable, but when David stalks off to get drunk the camera constantly cuts to her looking at him in a concerned way. Overall, this performance emphasises her ideal quality more, with less of a contrast between the real and the imaginary Sofía as in Abre los ojos – or, alternatively, both Sofías are nothing but an exotic ideal in David’s mind. After the splice into virtual reality, this Sofía does not ask for forgiveness, since there is simply less need of it (and, thus, less need for the male protagonist to put her in her place). This later Sofía is perkier, more cajoling. It is noteworthy that Cruz plays an actor in Abre los ojos (a dancer in Vanilla Sky). The first time César sees Sofía, during the

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opening credits, is as she performs her mime routine under her white mask, a featureless gaze that nonetheless attracts his attention. Later, when he is given pencil and paper in the psychiatric unit and attempts to recapture Sofía in a drawing, he tries to recreate her in her mime outfit with hat, suggesting also the possibility of her masked face, strengthened by the fact that the camera fades out on the drawing and then in on Sofía as she walks, in her mime make-up, to work. We should also note how César comments to Sofía on the insincerity of actors who can fake things they do not feel (something that Sofía herself will prove rather bad at when confronted by the disfigured César later on). In making these comments to Cruz as Sofía, César highlights the mise en abyme of the deceitful female soul that incorporates the possibility of Cruz herself as a faker, given her profession as an actor. This thematic note is removed in Vanilla Sky to be replaced by a stronger sense of performance as sexual enticement rather than fakery. David only encounters Sofía once when she is performing, after his disfigurement: she is practising her dance in a rehearsal costume that is extraordinarily reminiscent of a basque and suspenders, in contrast to the baggy pierrot costume and white mask of Abre los ojos. In contrast to the Sofía of Abre los ojos, this Sofía is pleased to see him and has no trouble looking at him. Although this encounter takes place in reality and not within David’s virtual world, the combination of sexual suggestiveness and sympathy idealises her once more, though it also suggests genuine affection and feeling rather than fakery, which matches her profession as a dancer rather than an actor. The trace of sexual teasing recurs in the sequence where David talks to his psychiatrist about Sofía, stating that his dreams of her were cruel and taunting: as he draws her, he imagines her posing for him, sometimes provocatively, whispering ‘I love you’ even as the psychiatrist talks to him. The psychiatrist comments, ‘Don’t you draw anything else?’ Cruz, in this sequence, is deliberately pouting and flirtatious: her costume – a striped jumper and white jeans – offers a hint of

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Cruise speaks for Cruz

Frenchness, Europeanness, which bestows on Cruz’s pouting an echo of the provocativeness of previous European actresses. The provocation might suggest a return to the notion of acting as fake in Abre los ojos, but the exaggeration in Cruz’s poses draws attention to them precisely as acting out a stereotyped Europeanness which is, in fact, all in David’s imagination. The UK DVD release of Vanilla Sky suggests further links between nation, the global and performance through its featurette ‘Hitting It Hard’, which is about the press tour undertaken by Crowe, Cruise and Cruz to promote the film. Throughout the featurette, Cruise is smiling and genial while Cruz is more silent and enigmatic, more poised in a style occasionally reminiscent of 1950s actresses. The focus is, unsurprisingly, very much on Cruise as the star to carry the film: Cruz is glimpsed on occasion, signing

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autographs or standing for photo calls, but we hear little from her herself. Perhaps the most telling instance is a shot of Cruz standing on a plane looking dejected: Cruise pokes his head into frame and says ‘She’s tired’ while Cruz nods slowly and silently in agreement. This offers some insight into the exhaustion that film acting entails through the need to feed the publicity machine, but it also suggests that Cruz cannot articulate her exhaustion for herself. Later, in a car, Cruise articulates his feelings about completing such a tour and the need to get to the finishing line: Cruz is present but does no more than nod tiredly. However, Cruz is the one who tells us where we are as the tour progress, with quick shots of her saying ‘Rome’ or ‘Paris’, and she is at her most animated when she wonders whether to speak in Italian (her doing so is duly included in the featurette). What appears to energise her is not the travel, or the trappings of film stardom, but the being in what, to an anglophone audience, are foreign places, and the opportunity to speak a language that is not English. Cruz revels in the foreignness: thus, her European identity is stressed over and above her efforts to perform and participate in the Hollywood publicity machine. The tour eventually arrives in Madrid, where Cruz has more to say, commenting on the Gran Vía as it heaves with people (ironically, this is the street where the eerie opening scenes of empty streets in Abre los ojos was shot). Her remarks on the Gran Vía are in voiceover: we do not see her articulate them. At one point in a Madrid restaurant someone tries to persuade Tom Cruise to sing the song ‘No te fío’ (that Macarena sang to Goebbels in La niña), to great general hilarity (and a woman sitting nearby then gives Cruise a perfect rendition of it): the moment stresses the alien nature of Spanishness to Cruise. At a subsequent party we see participants in Spanish cinema, including not only Amenábar as the director of the original film but also Almodóvar, who dances flamenco, as does Cruz herself, to the accompaniment of palmas. Then Cruise makes a comic attempt. The sequence emphasises Cruz as part of another world and another

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industry and also, through Cruise’s hamming, Spain as something not to be taken too seriously. On one level the DVD featurette suggests Cruz as a blank off screen as well as on, a blank wherein Cruise has most of the words to say while her role is confined to merely an acknowledgment of foreignness. Just as Sofía’s lines are given to her by David, so Cruise tends to speak for Cruz. Nonetheless, the latter’s sheer exhaustion at times, alongside the possibility that her muteness is due to (at this stage in her career) a comparative lack of fluency in English, suggest that Cruz as a blank can still be overwritten with aspects both of Spanish nationality and of otherness. Pointers back to her European origins occur intermittently, while the Madrid sequence underscores the Spanish roots to her career (and to some extent gives a benediction to her Hollywood endeavours). Despite its lukewarm reception, Vanilla Sky made Cruz known more widely because of the rumoured romance with Cruise; and therefore Cruz as dangerous European siren formed a foundational part of her international star persona. These two films, together with Corelli, contribute to Cruz’s objectification as an unreal object of desire, something to be looked at, widening the peculiar divide already present in Cruz’s persona between the young woman in love and, more and more, the femme fatale. Corelli objectifies Cruz primarily in terms of exoticism while Abre los ojos and Vanilla Sky do so primarily in terms of gender, but all three films taken together demonstrate that there is no neat divide between the two and that objectification occurs simultaneously on more than one level. This process of othering detracts from any suggestion of performance in the roles of Pelagia and Sofía, even though passive beauty might still require a measure of performance, even to the extent of deliberately acting a blank as Cruz was required to do for Abre los ojos. The reduction to an exotic Other has contributed considerably to the perception of Cruz as a pretty star rather than a ‘proper’ actor, the price she has had to pay for her

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initial incursion into Hollywood. She has, however, redressed the balance somewhat since 2001 when Corelli and Vanilla Sky were released, partly though her work in films such as Vicky Cristina but more essentially through her work back home in Spain, as we shall see in the next chapter.

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4 PERFORMING PERFORMANCE

This chapter will consider the two films that encompass the culmination of Cruz’s career to date and that graft onto her star persona her confirmation as a serious actor on an international level rather than simply fulfilling a role as an exotic love interest. Cruz achieves this, ironically, by going home and starring in two films by Spain’s best-known contemporary Spanish director, Pedro Almodóvar: Volver (2006) and Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces, 2009), the films that will form the central focus for discussion in this chapter. With her return to film-making for the Spanish film industry Cruz is able to elude the tag of exotic eye-candy (even as she acts the exotic Other in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Sex and the City 2: The Movie, films which she also made during this period), since she functions here as part of an all-Spanish cast: hers becomes simply the most prominent of the roles on offer. This chapter will also, however, consider Cruz’s performance in terms of self-reflexivity, as her parts in both films involve Cruz as performer acting out a part that requires the character also to perform (singing in one film, acting in the other). In both films the notion of performance extends into the character’s private life to imply that performance is an integral part of female identity, touching on, if not wholly embracing, the concept of the masquerade – the idea that women survive in a patriarchal society by adopting a deliberate and possibly exaggerated femininity which is nonetheless not distinct from the ‘real woman’ carrying out

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this exaggerated act. The question of performance – suggesting an active assumption of a role – contrasts with Cruz’s recent label, bestowed on her by the Spanish press, of Almodóvar’s muse, which suggests a passive position. It is these two films that have confirmed a strong association between Cruz and Almodóvar, Spain’s leading actress and leading director. Such a strong association has come late to the careers of both. Cruz first appeared in an Almodóvar film when she had a brief cameo appearance as the young prostitute Isabel, mother of the leading character Víctor (Liberto Rabal) in Carne trémula. Her first substantial Almodovarian role came with Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother, 1999), in which she played a pregnant nun, Rosa – but this was still not the leading role. Thus, although Cruz is now strongly associated with the director and has worked with him on quite a few occasions, she was well established as a Spanish and international star before taking on the two significant roles of Raimunda and Lena in Volver and Los abrazos rotos, which we will consider in this chapter. Cruz is also one of a series of actresses who come to function as Almodóvar’s muse – until he moves on to the next one. Having made Volver and Los abrazos rotos, Cruz was then passed over in favour of Elena Anaya for the director’s next film, La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In, 2011) – and Anaya, too, was described as Almodóvar’s muse (see Secher, 2011). Ingrid Sischy (2009) describes Cruz’s relationship with Almodóvar as ‘a collaboration as essential to movie history as the hookup between George Cukor and Katharine Hepburn or Woody Allen and Diane Keaton’. According to Sischy, Almodóvar claims jokingly to have rescued Cruz from the pitfall of simply being perceived as a beautiful woman in Hollywood, that was stymying her career. Sischy herself argues that Volver relaunched Cruz’s career, ‘as an actress, not just a movie star’ (ibid.). Louise France (2009) observes, on the one hand, that the director’s attitude of rescue towards his star is rather paternalistic: indeed, it could appear a

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rather sexist attitude to perceive Cruz as stranded in the Hollywood doldrums, in need of a saviour. On the other hand, we should not forget that Cruz’s persona included not only the notion of being a daughter but also, in some films, such as Jamón jamón, a daughter in search of a father figure to save her. Almodóvar and Cruz appear to be replicating this idea. Cruz had, in any case, looked up to Almodóvar ever since his film ¡Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, 1990) inspired her to become an actor, suggesting that she fully accepted this power structure. Cruz’s work with Almodóvar confers a new legitimacy and maturity to the former’s career to date. If her early films emphasised both comedy and the desirability of youth, while the films of her late twenties, as she began to venture further afield, oscillated around a Spanish identity that made her Spain’s girl and an occasionally reductive exotic love interest abroad, then as Cruz became truly a star at home and abroad she entered into a new phase both in her personal life (marriage and eventually children), suggesting a clear end to youth, and work, with internationally renowned directors (Allen as well as Almodóvar) that put her in the front rank of actresses. Such legitimacy has not barred her from more commercial enterprises such as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides nor has it prevented a continued questioning of her acting and starring abilities (White, 2010); but the bubbly young roles of her early career are, now, giving way to more mature ones. Volver in particular, alongside the later Oscar for Vicky Cristina, meant that Cruz could now be taken more seriously as an actor; and although her marriage to Bardem continues to interest gossip columnists the emphasis on a series of high-profile boyfriends has now disappeared. The seamless fit in a film such as Vanilla Sky between being an object of desire on screen and off screen seems now to have vanished. Cruz forms part of a coterie of Almodovarian actresses known as the chicas Almodóvar or ‘Almodóvar’s girls’, women who have played a variety of roles in the director’s films. Not all of these

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actresses are leading ladies: there are those who have played a series of supporting roles and cameos such as Rossy de Palma and Chus Lampreave, both of whom appear in Los abrazos rotos, with Lampreave also appearing in Volver. The size of the role for the individual actress may also vary from film to film: in our two films here, for instance, we see Lola Dueñas take on a substantial supporting role in Volver as Raimunda’s sister Sole, while in Los abrazos rotos she has a smaller role as a lipreader. However, many Almodóvar films, while having strong ensemble casts, nonetheless pivot around the particular concerns of the female protagonist – ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? (What Have I Done to Deserve This?, 1984), Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1988), ¡Átame!, Tacones lejanos (High Heels, 1991), Kika (1993), La flor de mi secreto (The Flower of My Secret, 1995) and Todo sobre mi madre. The actresses who play these leading roles come into great prominence in discussion and review of Almodóvar’s work and are often described as his muses. There is a clear serial nature to the director’s adoption of a so-called muse, and Cruz was by no means the first or last actress to merit this label. Almodóvar is often called a ‘woman’s director’, meaning that he favours plots where women appear sympathetic; quirky and lovable despite their faults. Women function not as beautiful objects of desire for men but as active subjects who work to resolve their own problems, often without help from men (although Los abrazos rotos does not follow this template). Conventional beauty and youth have also not been priorities when Almodóvar has come to cast his protagonists: many of the roles depict a middle-aged woman, while there is nearly always a part available for the octogenarian Lampreave. To be an Almodovarian actress, then, means having the capacity to portray a complex and possibly eccentric character to the full, embracing both pathos and humour. This does not mean that Almodovarian female characters are devoid either of controversy or of occasionally retrograde elements that hark back to older female

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stereotypes, but it does mean that such roles demand more of an actress than simply looking beautiful. Almodóvar offers his actresses scope to be quirkily three-dimensional; and this suggests that Cruz has the capacity to be understood as more than a pretty face and, thus, capable of tackling complex roles as she grows older. At the time of writing Cruz is not far off forty, an age when roles may well become less available to women, so being able to demonstrate that she has more than just youthful good looks is vital to Cruz’s career. Cruz’s Almodovarian track record already suggested an ability to act properly, but the two films we are considering here foreground the ability to act still more – but not unproblematically. As we shall see, while Volver makes strong demands on Cruz as an actor while placing her as the descendant of a line of strong European actresses that emphasises performance over beauty (while not neglecting the latter), Los abrazos rotos suggests that performance is beauty above all.

Volver The complex plot of Volver revolves around the family of Raimunda (Cruz), her daughter Paula (Yohanna Cobo), sister Sole (Lola Dueñas) and missing mother Irene (Carmen Maura). Raimunda is a hard-working mother trying to maintain the family through a series of low-paid jobs. Arriving home one evening she discovers that Paula has stabbed Raimunda’s husband to death, in self-defence after he tried to molest her. Raimunda decides to cover up her daughter’s crime: she hides the body in the freezer of an empty restaurant a friend is hoping to sell, but she has barely hidden the body when a film crew representative comes by to ask if she can open the restaurant for the crew. She agrees to this as a new opportunity to earn money, and her successful management of the restaurant culminates in a triumphant wrap party. Meanwhile, Sole has attended their aunt’s funeral in the La Mancha village where they

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come from. On driving back to Madrid she discovers her mother – who was thought to be dead – hidden in the car boot. Sole allows her mother to stay with her, but does not understand why Irene fears meeting Raimunda. Finally, the two do meet, and Irene begs her daughter’s forgiveness: she had not realised that Raimunda’s father was not only abusing her but had made her pregnant (the baby being Paula). Mother and daughter are reconciled. The family travel back to the house in the La Mancha village: there, Irene decides to stay and look after the family friend Agustina (Blanca Portillo), who is terminally ill with cancer. This summary hardly does justice to the intricate story threads and twists and turns in Almodóvar’s melodramatic plot. The story is, however, Raimunda’s above all, and it gave Cruz an opportunity to showcase her acting talents and extend her range of roles beyond that of eye-candy, an opportunity she clearly seized on. Nonetheless, prior to the commencement of filming the emphasis in publicity was not on Cruz at all but on the return of Carmen Maura to the Almodovarian fold. During the 1980s Maura had been the director’s leading lady of choice, until a quarrel between the two at the Oscars ceremony where the film Mujeres al borde had been nominated (it did not win). The subsequent rift that endured for many years made Maura’s reappearance in an Almodóvar film a newsworthy event. Indeed, Maura’s role as Irene, the mother of Raimunda, was seen to be at the heart of the film rather than Raimunda herself. Almodóvar commented on the strong role of his own mother during his childhood in La Mancha (where part of Volver is set), seeing his mother and her interaction with other women as crucial to his memory of his childhood (EFE, 2005). In many ways this idea was a continuation of the director’s homage to mothers in the earlier Todo sobre mi madre, which was dedicated to his own mother who had recently died when that film was made. In the EFE press article Cruz has a belated quote that tells of her pleasure at working with Almodóvar but nothing about her own

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role, and there is no hint of how seminal to Cruz’s career and persona her role in this film would be. Yet Raimunda herself is a mother and acts primarily to solve the problems of her own daughter, and can therefore be seen as a new generation of Almodovarian mothers, which, in turn, belong to a strong tradition of mothers in cinematic melodrama. Peter Matthews, in a highly negative review of Volver, compares Raimunda to Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945), who also works hard and sacrifices everything for a daughter who murders. Matthews argues that ‘Cruz is a powder-puff alongside Joan Crawford’s cast-iron, hungry go-getter, whose fraught relationship with her acquisitive daughter carries a real burden of love and pain’ (Matthews, 2006, p. 43). His negative comparison of Cruz to Crawford ignores the strong difference between the two daughters for which they fight (Paula being far more sympathetic) and the more benign caring community that surrounds and supports Raimunda. This softens the latter’s role, so that the negativity, if indeed it is merited, should not be put down to Cruz’s performance. The comparison, however, underscores how Cruz manages to combine strength and passion with warmth, as demonstrated, for instance, in the contrast between her motherly comfort of Paula and the clinical efficiency with which she disposes of the body of the father that Paula has killed in self-defence. This suggests a peak to these different threads of her persona which make her an excellent melodramatic actress, in contrast to Crawford whose character appears ultimately wrong-headed in her devotion to her utterly selfish daughter, and whose star persona was colder and steelier than Cruz’s. Almodóvar ‘envisaged Raimunda as a mixture of strength and fragility’ (Camino, 2010, p. 638): in picking Cruz for the role he did no more than bring to the fore latent tendencies in her persona such as melodramatic ability (as, for example, in Jamón jamón), vulnerability (her roles as a daughter figure) and fiery passion. Almodóvar compared Cruz’s performance favourably with her Hollywood career, believing that Hollywood did not use her well. He

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also felt that her personal involvement with American actors had not helped. Her performance in Volver served, he thought, finally to offer her the respect as an actor that she merited (Marín, 2007). His comments suggest that only in coming home, and in acting with established Spanish directors rather than the frothy Hollywood vehicles she had appeared in to date, could Cruz be taken seriously as an actor. His comments about her personal life are also intriguing, since news of her relationship with Spanish actor Javier Bardem would soon break, and there is an implicit suggestion that in this area, too, Cruz had to come back to Spain in order to find a relationship that was not only more positive and more lasting but also better for her reputation as star. Home is clearly best. Yet her Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role as Raimunda would not bear fruit: it was her subsequent role as best supporting actress in Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona that would eventually net her an Oscar (she did, however, earn a Goya, the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars, for her performance as Raimunda). On the occasion of her first Oscar nomination, Cruz made it clear in interview that her success here was not the result of her efforts alone but was a collaborative effort in which others participated – possibly a commonplace when a star’s work is being celebrated – but also made it clear that this came from many years of her own hard work (García, 2007). In the same interview she also expressed her certainty that this role allowed others to see her capacity as an actor, and as a result she was being offered more demanding roles; thus the film had functioned as a showcase for her. This could be viewed negatively, as one Spanish reviewer felt that Cruz prevented the other characters from receiving their due despite good performances from Dueñas, Maura and Portillo (Alarcón, 2006, p. 58), but Volver as star vehicle for Cruz was generally hailed positively. Many, including Almodóvar himself, saw Cruz as one of a new generation of strong European female stars; and the director

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deliberately drew on this heritage when directing her, requiring her to watch the earlier work of Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani in order to give her an idea of what he wanted (Lindo, 2008). This sense of a heritage of European stardom had been observed elsewhere, for instance by Stephen Frears, who directed Cruz in The Hi-Lo Country: Frears commented: ‘She does have that European thing, doesn’t she? The first time I saw her she reminded me of the whole history of European cinema – you know, all those great actresses like Loren’ (Hattenstone, 2006). On the DVD commentary for the UK release, Almodóvar – who introduces Cruz (who is also offering commentary) as the undisputed star of the film – tells her she has the eyes of Audrey Hepburn, drawing particular attention to Raimunda’s face when drinking cocktails at the wrap party. Later in the commentary, as Raimunda runs back to Sole’s flat, having left it upset at discovering her mother there, Almodóvar comments that she runs like Sophia Loren. At the very end, now in Agustina’s house, Irene sits and watches the Italian film Bellísima (1951) starring Anna Magnani: Almodóvar comments on what Magnani is doing and then, as the camera cuts to Raimunda, he tells Cruz that she looks more Italian than ever. Indeed, in the film itself he emphasises this comparison by dressing Raimunda, at this point preparing for the party, in a black slip and positioning Cruz in front of the mirror just like Magnani in the film clip. There is also a sense of Cruz forming a new generation of Almodovarian actresses that is remarked on by her predecessor Carmen Maura in a discussion between the director and the principal actresses of the film (included as an extra on the UK DVD): Maura says to Cruz that she has never seen any director love an actress as Almodóvar loves Cruz, even more than the director loved her. And the film itself offers us a sense of passing on the torch: the song performed at the wrap party makes Raimunda/Cruz a star of sorts while Irene/Maura watches her lovingly as she performs. Cruz herself claims, generally, to have attempted to avoid the influence of past actors. On the release of the remake of the film

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Fanfan la Tulipe (2003; original 1952), she said she preferred to take inspiration from the director Krawczyk than from the original film or its original star Gina Lollobrigida (Creamer, 2003). But Cruz appears haunted by the ghosts of past actresses; and though she herself may prefer to emphasise her work as distinct from those of earlier actresses, the perception of her as part of a lineage of European actresses has now been grafted onto her persona. Cruz as Raimunda walks a fine line between performance and simply being a star. The clothes of all the female leads veer towards the trashy, kitsch and working-class (except, perhaps, Paula), but only Cruz’s wardrobe has any pretensions to glamour. This marks her out as the star, and perhaps mitigates the role of suffering but triumphant working-class woman that Cruz is playing. As Camino notes, Cruz remains glamorous despite all the traumas she undergoes (Camino, 2010, p. 639). Nonetheless, costume also makes clear that Cruz is acting a part distinct from her own self, as with the padding of her backside to make her appear slightly rounder than in real life. Cruz comments on reaction to the padding in the USA, believing that audiences there were surprised that an actress would be willing to appear fatter or rounder than she actually was (García, 2007). The implication here is that performance, acting, fitting the role, all are more important in European film than in Hollywood film, where beauty counts for more. This point emphasises performance, the star as active in adapting to roles rather than simply looking pretty. Cruz also comments (Ponga, 2006, p. 90) that the false rear was important to her performance since it made her move differently: thus costume and acting become intricately related. Costume and body also, however, percolate into Cruz’s persona outside the film: on the DVD commentary Cruz notes (in one of her comparatively few comments on the making of Volver) that journalists always wanted to ask her if her breasts were natural, and that this film gave them the excuse to do so. She makes this remark, however, at the point in the dialogue where Irene asks

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Raimunda about the size of her breasts: thus, again, the division between star and character is blurred. A similar blurring occurs when considering Raimunda as wife and mother holding the family together. Elvira Lindo, in a reflective piece on Cruz that included an interview, met with her to talk after the latter had been working all day (on the film Nine, 2009): the latter was tired, and Lindo talks of her beauty as that of ‘any working girl who comes home, whose body surely aches and who experiences the mental fragility of so many hours on one’s feet’ (Lindo, 2008). This concept matches the idea of Raimunda that Almodóvar is at pains to convey, primarily through the sequence showing her at her various jobs, but also in her work in the restaurant and the bartering and cooptation she undertakes with her friends in order to make her catering a success. Cruz observes (Ponga, 2006, p. 90) that Raimunda’s role is that of an actress, having to improvise in every situation in order to ensure she and her daughter survive. But if she is an actress, Cruz also believes she is a force of nature. Thus, for both Raimunda and Cruz, their work is precisely that of performance, yet Raimunda is a force of nature just as Cruz herself is sometimes understood in terms of animal imagery, being naturally fiery. The notion of motherhood as a performance derives quite considerably from Almodóvar’s own views of what it means to be a mother. As regards his earlier Todo sobre mi madre, he commented that he wanted to make a film about the capacity for acting in those who are not themselves actors, an ability he saw in the women of his family in La Mancha. He noted that they were better suited for fakery and pretence than men. Women often solved problems through telling lies and thus kept family life together in a world where men still ruled, yet the men were never aware of what the women were doing. He concluded his reminiscence by uniting the ideas of pretence, damaged motherhood and female solidarity: ‘la capacidad de la mujer para fingir. Y la maternidad herida. Y la solidaridad espontánea entre las mujeres’ (‘the woman’s capacity for

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Star and character hard at work in Volver (2006)

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pretending. And wounded motherhood. And the spontaneous solidarity among women’: quoted in Caparrós Lera, 2005, pp. 34–5). Mothers can thus be actors. Motherhood, too, is a form of masquerade which is not separate and distinct from the real woman carrying out such a performance, but where there is an explicit or implicit intention to ensure that patriarchy does not really know what is going on. Cruz’s performance as Raimunda – an actor performing the role of a mother who herself performs different roles and assumes different guises in order to conceal the truth and, thus, ensure the survival of her daughter – suggest levels of mise en abyme wherein the division of deliberate performance from natural behaviour can never ultimately be separated. The mise en abyme becomes still more pronounced when we consider Raimunda as singing star. A central scene to the film is the moment in the restaurant when Raimunda sings the title song ‘Volver’. In terms of plot this scene adds nothing, but emotionally it paves the way for the reunited family as Irene and Raimunda revisit their past and are subsequently moved to reconcile. It is only at this point that Raimunda’s family share space together for the first time, even if Raimunda herself is not aware of it. This occasion is the first time that Raimunda has sung since the events of the past (the abuse by her father and her mother’s rejection of her) which led her to give up singing. As such it points back to acceptance of the past and forgiveness (as the title ‘Volver’, meaning to return or come back, might well imply). Throughout the film, up to this point, Raimunda has performed many roles: as wife, mother, sister and niece, as friend to Agustina, as worker in a variety of low-paid jobs as we see in a montage early in the film; then as caterer for the film crew. In all her roles hitherto she has acted as a provider of services for others. The point at which she starts singing becomes the point at which Raimunda performs something totally for herself. Raimunda is also, however, expressing the emotions of all the central women present

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Raimunda as singing star, Cruz as lip-synching star

and, in that sense, she again performs a service for them, being able to express what they do not. The director points out on the DVD commentary the fact that Paula has never heard her mother sing, suggesting that for many years, as her daughter was growing up, Raimunda had nothing to sing about because she was unhappy. Perhaps the fact that she sings now suggests a chance to perform her real self, rather than the many chores she has to do every day to keep the family going. But again, perhaps, her role as mother, as we have seen, cannot be so easily distinguished from her real self. In performing she pretends, but she is also being ‘real’. This applies to the performance of the song as well. For once, Raimunda rises above her usual status of going about the chores unnoticed (though even here, of course, the fact that Almodóvar and Cruz draw attention to this background work through the creation of Volver ironically means Raimunda no longer goes unnoticed). She becomes the star and the centre of attention, freed from her responsibilities but simultaneously

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bringing the family together again. Here too, however, Raimunda also coincides with Cruz in that the song provides a star vehicle for both and draws attention to both precisely as stars. On the DVD commentary Cruz speaks of her concern about miming the song, listening to it constantly in order to get to know it. Thus, although she does not actually sing the song but mimes it, in a sense she does perform it, and she rehearses for it: there is a strong emphasis on the effort it took her. Cruz’s performance here is not, in one sense, authentic in that the voice we hear is not hers but that of singer Estrella Morente, but this, in another sense, simply adds another layer to the idea of performing. This comes, first, in the need to match image to voice: subsequent voice recording is often a part of a film’s post-production in order to ensure the right image also has the right voice. Here the situation is reversed as Cruz strives to give the correct image to the correct voice. Second, Cruz is performing singing even if her voice is not heard. This is reinforced by obvious markers such as Cruz’s hand-clapping to keep the rhythm (an integral part of this style of Spanish music) and her bodily gestures and facial expressions that suggest she is caught up in her own performance of the song; but also by the fact that Almodóvar emphasises her audience, specifically her family, as he cuts back and forth from Raimunda to Sole, Irene and Paula as they take in the emotions derived from what she sings. What does it mean that it is precisely Cruz who does this, an actor not known for singing prowess? It foregrounds the fact that this is, in fact, an act, a pretence. It also underscores Cruz’s own profession as a performer and the gap that may emerge between the performance we see on screen and the actor carrying it out. Yet the emotion of the moment, drawing the family together, undermines any sense of distance. Volver, then, is among other things a film about an actor performing the mother, a role that involves acting and pretence; in other words, Cruz is performing performance. In the DVD commentary Almodóvar remarks (of the scene in which Irene and

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Raimunda talk about the past) that he had wondered whether to include a flashback at this point to convey what Irene did, but says then he decided just to trust the delivery of the actors. He wanted to convey the horror of the past simply through their performance, without aid, showing a trust in them and giving them some power. Almodóvar’s emphasis on the multifaceted nature of performance therefore nuances some of the concerns about female passivity in the director–muse relationship, and complicates a simplistic understanding of Cruz as simply a beautiful woman. Cruz is now presented as successfully carrying out a demanding multidimensional role and seen to be acting it while remaining true to her persona of a sympathetic and fiery character who is marked out as a star.

Los abrazos rotos As with Volver, the plot of Los abrazos rotos is complex with many strands, complicated further by the fact that much of the story is told in flashback. The film opens with the blind screenwriter Harry Caine (Lluis Homar), who reminisces about the film he made under his real name of Mateo Blanco, a film that was funded by the rich Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez), who insists that his mistress Lena (Cruz) takes a leading role. In fact, this is Martel’s chosen method of trying to prevent Lena from leaving him: she was his former secretary, who also conducted a little prostitution on the side in order to secure funds to help her seriously ill father – until all the bills were settled by Martel in exchange for her becoming his lover. Mateo and Lena fall in love and run away; Martel sabotages the film to ensure it flops on its opening. Before Mateo and Lena can embark in earnest on their new life together, however, a car crash kills her and renders him blind. The blind Mateo returns to Madrid and resumes his work in the film industry under his new name of Harry Caine. Many years

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later, unseen footage of Lena’s film Chicas y maletas (Girls and Suitcases) is found, and the film is restored to what Mateo originally wanted it to be. It also becomes a homage to the long-dead Lena. The central relationship of the film is that between the director and his muse and lover. Although the director is not a direct representation of Almodóvar himself, there are parallels, most notably the film within a film Chicas y maletas, a film that bears some resemblance to the film that broke Almodóvar into the international mainstream, Mujeres al borde. This is not the first time that the director has come to reflect on his own trajectory, since some autobiographical elements also occur in the earlier La mala educación (Bad Education, 2004), while the protagonist of La ley del deseo (Law of Desire, 1987) is also a director and scriptwriter. In these earlier films the director is the object and not the subject of desire, thus contrasting with Los abrazos rotos, where, this time, it is the director himself who is overtaken by an obsession with his new actress. The latter is the film that explicitly explores and celebrates the relationship between director and muse. The intense relationship between director and star echoes, to some extent, the real-life positioning of Almodóvar and Cruz by the media, in particular the latter’s frequent use of the term ‘muse’, a concept already briefly considered at the beginning of this chapter. The media often use the term to describe any close and consistent collaboration between a (male) director and an actress: it incorporates the concept of inspiration for the former by the latter. While the notion of collaboration suggests an active and more equal partnership for both parties, the role of muse comes to be a more passive one for the woman. Her function is simply to inspire by being, while the director has all the active artistic endeavour. Implicit in this is the idea that the beauty (or whatever other quality) of the woman is essential to her but also natural: in other words, she plays no active part in achieving this state of inspiration. She simply is. In consequence she also implicitly deserves less credit than the more

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active creator, director, who is the mediator between her and us, the audience. Thus, the concept of muse reproduces an old gender divide between the male as active and the woman as passive. It also assigns desire and subjectivity to the male director, while the actress is simply the object of desire: there is no suggestion that she can desire for herself. This is not necessarily to say that the passive position also implies powerlessness, for the female star is the one who commands the male gaze, that of the director – but this power does not extend to her functioning as an active independent subject. It suggests that the actress does not have her own part to play in the creative process through deliberate acting and performance. This relationship proves true both for Mateo and Lena, and for Almodóvar and Cruz: as with Abre los ojos and Vanilla Sky, the role of the woman is to be an object of desire, a far cry from the active performativity of Raimunda/Cruz in Volver. Commentators noted the intensity and the obsessive quality in the relationship between Almodóvar and Cruz, which was at its most pronounced in this film. Regina Weinreich begins her piece on Los abrazos rotos with the phrase ‘Pedro Almodóvar’s love affair with his leading lady is legend’ (Weinreich, 2009). It is not clear from the article that this only means Cruz: given the director’s artistic history, it could mean that he has this love affair with all the leading actresses with whom he has worked, such as Carmen Maura, Marisa Paredes, Cecilia Roth and Victoria Abril, some of whom he has worked with more often than Cruz. Nonetheless, Cruz is included in this idea of obsession; and the occasion for the remark, an article on Los abrazos rotos, cues us to think in terms of Cruz. Peter Bradshaw argues that Cruz plays her role ‘in a state of almost hyperreal gorgeousness, a sublime beauty in whose presence Almodóvar’s camera goes into a kind of swooning trance’ (2009b), a remark that neatly summarises the apparent weakness of the director before the hypnotic beauty of his muse, which, in fact, disguises who holds the real power. We find a similar concept when Maribel Marín (2007) suggests that she has

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‘conquered’ a long line of eminent directors of whom Almodóvar is just one, which appears to award power to Cruz, more power than she is likely to have had in reality. Cruz herself stated that Almodóvar was the one in charge at the time of Volver. While acknowledging a friendship with him, she felt that while shooting he was a director and not someone to chat with. She also observed that he was able to get out of her a performance that she herself had not known that she was capable of (A. I., 2006). It is as if Almodóvar knows her better than she knows herself; and it is certainly he who inspires her to better performances: the impulse comes from him and not her. The special features of the UK DVD release of the film include a short sequence, ‘Directing Girls and Suitcases’ that uses a split screen to show Cruz acting in the pivotal scene from the film within a film, involving the suitcase full of drugs, while simultaneously we see Almodóvar directing her. Although this is only explicitly stated at the end, Almodóvar here attempts to convey to Cruz what her character Lena is thinking. The result is that, on the left-hand side of the screen, we see Cruz, who says very little, while listening to the other actor in the scene give her dialogue (for the most part out of shot); on the right-hand side, we see Almodóvar responding physically and verbally to the dialogue. Thus, he seems to speak for Cruz, who mostly speaks only to echo what he has just said. The left-hand screen focuses on Cruz’s face, which is for the most part passive, listening to the ongoing dialogue on both sides of the screen. Occasionally, she makes a gesture or facial expression that responds to what Almodóvar is saying, rather than what the other actor says. This also occurs at the level of the fictional Lena: in the opening sequences, all Lena does is simply stand and pose, then, as the director Mateo comes into shot, she listens to him. Although there is no audible dialogue at this point, she does not open her mouth, so clearly is not saying anything. A sequence reminiscent of the special feature also occurs when Lena prepares gazpacho (a scene derived from a similar one in Mujeres al borde) while Mateo tells her how her character feels.

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This special feature is the only one of its kind on the DVD: there is no ‘making of’ feature, for example. It serves to show the director at work, but it also reinforces the notion of the active director and passive muse. Cruz seems to have no thoughts or emotions of her own: the only reaction that appears genuinely hers is when she joins in general laughter at a joke made by the director concerning the TV series Sex and the City (and even then, she is clearly responding to the director: she initiates nothing). Once again, as the camera focuses on her fairly empty face, she must simply be, moulded by the director into the shape he wants without any input from herself. Her role is to look beautiful; hence the camera never moves from her face to take in the other actor. The implications of the feature may well be misleading: we do not know from this very short sequence (approximately two minutes) if this method of direction is used throughout the film or if Cruz has more participation in shaping her role. However, the fact that it is singled out for inclusion on a DVD underscores the perpetuation of the director–muse axis that leaves Cruz in a passive position. That this is not simply chance is suggested by Cruz’s advice to Elena Anaya, the actress who took the leading role in Almodóvar’s next film La piel que habito, to ‘just be very obedient and don’t make him mad’ (Secher, 2011). Further pointers towards this passivity are present in a joint interview by Louise France (2009) with actress and director: France describes Cruz as the ‘glamorous assistant’ or ‘dutiful daughter’ (a throwback here to Evans’s (2004) concept of Cruz’s star persona in terms of being a daughter). France observes that Cruz says less even though her level of English is better: at a later Q&A session held at the British Film Institute Cruz speaks just twice (France, 2009). The application of the label ‘muse’ might, of course, simply be a convenient shorthand for the more complex relationship between male director and female star that may retain these stereotypical notions of activity and passivity but which nonetheless serves primarily to indicate a close working relationship. Its use to describe

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the working relationship of Almodóvar and Cruz is, nonetheless, intriguing. Almodóvar, even before his close collaboration with Cruz, had gained a reputation for creating characters who were sometimes vulnerable to the ‘feminine’ emotions of love and suffering as a result of their care for others, but who were, nonetheless, strong active subjects. The director’s list of previous actresses who took on these strong roles is an impressive roster of female leads who stand out in the field of Spanish cinema if not beyond it: Maura, Abril, Paredes and Roth, as mentioned before. Arguably, Almodóvar has had many muses; but equally, these actresses have strong reputations in their own right even though the association with Almodóvar clearly impinges. Although, as we have seen, Almodóvar likes to claim credit for ‘rescuing’ Cruz, her reputation at home and abroad was very strong before the work on her major roles with him. When Lindo asked her in an interview if she thought Pedro had ‘given her her place in the world’ (Lindo, 2008), this question was almost overloaded with meaning, ignoring Cruz’s work elsewhere and her position as Spain’s top actress through leading roles with other directors. But Cruz’s response to Lindo’s question links together the two films Volver and Vicky Cristina, since Cruz apparently got her part in the latter because Allen had seen the former. It might be true to say that Almodóvar has given Cruz a new position in the world of film acting in that the link between stardom and acting has been strengthened beyond her position when she first started making American films. Nonetheless, he cannot take all the credit, and her roster of films and star persona prior to these tell us so. The notion of muse may, in fact, disguise the work that Cruz puts into her performance, something that Almodóvar is well aware of. In interview with Maria Delgado, Almodóvar noted that Cruz ‘needs time to work through a role, but when she begins to get in touch with the core of a role then she hurls herself in and the results are amazing’ – thus, they needed some time to work together (Delgado, 2009, p. 41). He also thought that Cruz was different from

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her character in that Lena is older with a more troubled past, thus more work was needed (p. 41). He argues that Cruz was not ideal for the role because she ‘doesn’t have the fallen angel about her; she’s full of light. So we have to create [a darker side] through acting’ (p. 42). This goes against the concept of the passive muse: Cruz is acting and acting hard precisely because the role does not fit the perception of her as lacking a dark side. The idea of the muse might also mean that we overlook the efforts Cruz’s fictional counterpart Lena takes in order to be noticed, to serve, in fact, as muse. Although her first appearance is as a secretary (and occasional prostitute) who works primarily in order to care for her mother and ailing father, she states fairly early on that her original ambition was to be an actor. While she subsequently takes up the liaison with Ernesto Martel, her boss, apparently as a form of payment for his help in providing her dying father with healthcare, an ellipsis of time shows her established in Martel’s home and dreaming once more about acting. She it is who approaches the director Mateo Blanco with a view to auditioning for his next film; and once he sees her he falls as heavily in love with her as Martel has done. The film’s subsequent plot revolves around the conflicting desire for Lena of these two men. Lena’s actions, however, suggest an active position that contrasts with her apparently passive role as muse. The sense of performance is stressed in the scene when Martel and Lena make love in their Ibiza retreat. Afterwards Lena goes to the bathroom and vomits: she then repairs the ravages to her face caused by nausea and distress. The cut from her application of make-up to her emergence from the bathroom, immaculately made up and with a broad smile, suggests beauty and desirability as deliberate performance: the vomiting suggests the cost to Lena of the performance. The ambiguities over Cruz’s positioning as muse recur when considering the ‘look’ Almodóvar has in mind for Lena within the film. The short opening credit sequence features a stand-in for Lena as the film crew measure for distance and light: the woman

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concerned appears pleasant enough but does not look like a star: the wiggle of her nose at one point as the crew run round her disturbs the supposition of the beautiful woman as object of the film gaze. But soon Cruz/Lena comes to replace her and take up position where the first woman stood, and it is as if the disturbance is resolved, because now here is the real star, the beautiful woman, and the previous shots were clearly simply in preparation for her. Lena is, above all, something to be looked at: the footage shot by Martel’s son, Ray X (Rubén Ochandiano), as part of the former’s surveillance of his mistress, also suggests this. There is an irony in Mateo’s blindness as a result of the crash that kills Lena: it is as if his blindness is an instinctive response to the fact that he has lost the object of his gaze. The sequence that emphasises the question of look the most, however, is the one in which Mateo/Almodóvar uses Lena/Cruz as a dressing-up doll to try out various wigs. The actress simply becomes the canvas on which the director tries out his artistic experiments. Lena responds and reacts to the commands of Mateo to pose, but has no thoughts of her own. The montage sequence of poses nonetheless draws attention to the fact that beauty itself is a performance that needs time, thought and staff to maintain. It also draws attention, if briefly, to Cruz’s by now well-known track record for modelling and advertising in such campaigns as that of L’Oréal hair products. In one sense, we see directly through the character of Lena to Cruz’s star persona, yet, at the same time, Cruz is performing Lena as she performs in her turn, which goes against such transparency: we are back to the mise en abyme we encountered with Raimunda in Volver. A specific publicity still used for Los abrazos rotos features Cruz wearing a curly white wig at odds with the long raven hair that forms part of Cruz’s Mediterranean persona. The wig is one of the many that Lena tries on in the sequence where Mateo searches for her ‘look’, and is never seen or referred to again: for the film Chicas y maletas Lena has a more preppy look (that serves to distinguish her from the suited

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The ghosts of actresses past: Cruz as dressing-up doll in Los abrazos rotos (2009)

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Carmen Maura who played Pepa, the equivalent role, in Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervio). This raises the question as to why, therefore, the image of Cruz in the white wig has been used so heavily as part of the film’s publicity and marketing. The image is striking precisely because it goes against the received image of Cruz and thus calls attention. It suggests fakery, and thus deliberate performance. Bradshaw, in his review of the film, argued that Cruz’s ‘exquisiteness consists at least partly in its fabricated quality; she is part of cinema’s magnificent artifice’ (Bradshaw, 2009b). Los abrazos rotos draws attention not only to the relationship between director and muse but also the labour that goes into its making. The status of muse is something that is constructed. This takes us back to the question of the masquerade, in which the artifice, the trappings of femininity, masks the ‘real’ woman but is not totally distinct from it. If Lena appears to be simply a dressing-up doll for Mateo’s inspiration, at home with Martel we discover her in front of the mirror putting on make-up and jewellery (Almodóvar dwells momentarily on the tongs that curl her eyelashes). This is her own self-directed acting performance, making herself look beautiful for a man she does not care for, preparing for her own domestic acting role. This, as with the scene where she reapplies her make-up after vomiting, is a performance with the intent to continue her career as an actor. Indeed, her life with Martel is itself good training, since, as Mateo’s friend and co-worker Judit (Blanca Portillo) comments, if she has lived with Martel for two years she must be a good actress. Lena’s considered strategy to become an actor complicates Evans’s concept of Cruz as a daughter (one he proposed, it should be noted, long before the release of Los abrazos rotos). Initially, the film emphasises the dutiful daughter since, apart from the opening credits, the first major sequence that includes Lena shows her sorrow at her father’s illness and her commitment to caring for her parents. The point is further reinforced given that Lena turns to Martel for

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financial help when her father becomes still worse: when we see them leave the hospital together there is a clear implication that Lena will recompense the help given her family by Martel in the only way she possibly can. This is complicated, however, by the sequence immediately between these two that shows Lena, under the name of Severine, hustling for clients. The juxtaposition of the two sequences leads to a ready assumption that she does this simply to provide money for her clearly impoverished parents and so this action simply demonstrates the lengths to which she is willing to go to help them. It suggests that family duty comes before everything and involves personal sacrifice (which recalls Volver). But this is never actually stated; and, in fact, the conversation between her and the madam who finds her clients links the prostitution to her desire to be an actor. When Lena discovers that her keenest client is none other than her boss, the madam informs her that Martel knows she previously tried to get into acting but also that she ‘acted’ for the madam: the use of the verb ‘to act’ (actuar) underscores a link between acting and prostitution. Los abrazos rotos thus offers us the flipside of Volver: if Raimunda becomes a star almost incidentally as part of her daily labours to hold her family together, then Lena’s efforts to support her family can also be seen as a by-product of her own labour to become a star. Lena’s endeavours to position herself as muse add a complexity to Cruz’s own persona and, in particular, her own status as muse to Almodóvar. While Cruz may be silent for the most part when alongside Almodóvar, she refers time and again in interviews to the hard work entailed in her rise to fame, a position that would resemble Lena’s were she ever to be asked and were she willing to tell. We may also remember Cruz’s fears of a possible ‘taint’ deriving from her early work in Jamón jamón, which she worked hard to counteract by taking on roles that contrasted to the early emphasis on nudity and sex scenes. While Lena’s path to a starring role has been, as Almodóvar himself acknowledged, a darker one than Cruz’s, there is

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a parallel in the labour stardom involves. Cruz’s role as Lena, as an aspiring actor, therefore offers us similar complexities in understanding performance as her role as Raimunda the housewife and singing star. Both roles suggest performance as something that is not a separate activity distinct from ‘normal’ life but one in which there is no clear distinction between off screen/stage and on, in which performance is just one of many daily activities undertaken simply to keep going. Almodóvar proposes that performance is not something confined to professionals and, in doing so, blurs the boundary between the star and so-called ‘ordinary’ people. There is, of course, a certain irony to this in that Cruz in real life does occupy a separate sphere reserved for stars, with a concern for privacy, access to designer fashions and large houses, the ability/obligation to travel round the world and (until recently) the chance for relationships with eligible and attractive actors. Her work in these two films, however, blurs this divide by stressing her acting and performance in the discourse surrounding the films, even when it comes to being a star and being beautiful: these, too, involve effort. If Cruz’s roles as Raimunda and Lena mark her out as being an actor as well as a star, then they do so by demonstrating that performance and stardom are, ironically, a part of everyday life.

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CONCLUSION

Cruz has always insisted on the hard graft involved in her career. When talking of her increasing prominence in Hollywood, she speaks of this as something that she has actively worked at (Smith, 2001). As we have seen, she made an effort to nuance her early reputation by actively lobbying for the role of Luz in Belle Époque to counteract the overt sexuality of Jamón jamón, while later she stresses her effort to learn English in order to further her Hollywood career, even as she acknowledges that her Spanish accent might still have advantages. The frequent blandness of her comments in interviews – nothing critical is ever said about directors or fellow cast members, while questions about off-screen romances are gently parried – suggests a good deal of self-control or, at the very least, rigorous coaching by publicity staff. These elements suggest a deliberate career strategy in terms of publicity. They also contrast with aspects of her star persona, such as the role of muse, the belief that Cruz’s role is primarily to look pretty rather than to deliberately perform, the emphasis on romance and personal desires in her on-screen characters that dovetails to a great extent with the high-profile names with whom she has (been rumoured to have) been romantically involved, the repetition of the role of daughter figure in need of love and care. If Cruz’s star persona can be summarised as one of artless beauty streaked with passion, the colder construction of this persona can also at times be perceived. She may have been the media face of

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brands such as L’Oréal and Ralph Lauren but she is also an actor who can perform and provide a very different ‘look’ in different roles while being, nonetheless, recognisably Cruz. As we have seen throughout this book, there are times when she appears to do no more than simply look beautiful, but there are others when her role makes great demands on both the character and the actor playing her. Cruz’s persona and career over its trajectory of roughly twenty years (at the time of writing) revolves around this play between being the subject and the object – of her films but also of the discourse that surrounds them. A similar duality exists as regards Cruz’s nationality and how this is understood within her star persona. Perriam notes the double bind that Cruz has to bear as regards her persona at home and abroad: while the Spanish media lay claim to Cruz’s success abroad as specifically Spanish (and thus shouldering the weight of representing Spain to others), that notion of Spanishness is blurred and hybridised into a more generic Latinness in the USA (Perriam, 2005, p. 34). The ‘idealisation of difference’ that Perriam noted for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is extended to other films to convert Spanishness into a generic otherness in which national identity is submerged. Of course, it is not surprising that the Spanish media care more about Spanish national identity than Hollywood does; but, ironically, their pressure on Cruz’s image serves to objectify her as much as render her ‘one of us’. Cruz’s own stance on her Spanishness seems ambivalent and, thus, of a piece with the ambiguity of her persona: she insists in interviews that she has not ‘left’ Spain even as her international career takes her around the world – and we might bear in mind the renewed energy she acquires towards the end of her round-the-world publicity tour of Vanilla Sky once she arrives in Madrid (as on the DVD extra feature). She nonetheless planned for a career beyond Spain, even while calculating that retention of her Spanish accent would offer her more opportunities. And to a great extent she has achieved what she set

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out to do in that she has appeared in a succession of American films, with equal billing to American A-list stars. However, in terms of credibility her best successes came with her return home and appearance in Volver and, to a lesser extent, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. A brief comparison of these two films will serve to summarise the paradoxes of Cruz’s particular position as star that we have been exploring throughout this book: the perception of her as subject or object; the difference between a national ideal and exoticism; the warm, loving investment in personal relationships as against the dangerous, feral femme fatale; and the distinction between passive beauty and active performance. As both films are directed by wellknown international names, this suggests that Cruz has, to some extent, ‘made it’, but, furthermore, the fact that both directors play with the aforementioned dichotomies suggests some continuity to her star image within Spain and without. Allen offers us an exotic and violent animal passion that threatens to eclipse the civilisation of the Americans, reminding us that the exotic Other always threatens to steal the show because it is quite simply more interesting and attractive than the bland bourgeois self it is compared against. Old stereotypes of the Other are rehashed, but the emphasis on Cruz as active performer in the discourse surrounding the film serves to underscore her knowing connivance and, thus, overt control over these stereotypes, even as Cristina strives to render her as just one more tourist attraction – which ironically serves to mark Cruz out as star. Almodóvar, however, offers Cruz a role of strong female subjectivity in Volver while still stopping the film in its tracks to ensure that her character’s star status equals her own. Yet behind the scenes Cruz seems apparently crushed beneath the weight of her director’s reputation, reduced virtually to silence and objectified as a muse in a way that counteracts the subjectivity of her role, even as Almodóvar claims to have rescued her from the trap of passive beauty. In this light, it is worth concluding with one last glance at Cruz’s Oscar win. Although it could surely be argued that her role as

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Raimunda was a better performance, in part precisely because it did not simply repeat familiar clichés of Spanishness, Cruz’s win with Vicky Cristina, in contrast to her failure to win as Raimunda, might have been not so much a consolation prize but a tacit acknowledgment that Cruz can play Hollywood at its own game and win. That, too, is a hallmark of a star.

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NOTES

1 Performing youth 1 I must here acknowledge my students who studied the film with me over the years at Newcastle University; they spotted this detail before I did.

2 Performing nation 2 At the time of writing (2012), a sequel to the film has been announced. La reina de España (The Queen of Spain) will feature Cruz once more as Macarena Granada in a story set in the Spain of the 1950s. Trueba is set to direct and Cruz to co-produce, while some actors from the earlier film will also reappear (Hopewell, 2012).

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Knollmueller, Marit (2009), ‘Death is a Dream: Placing Abre los ojos in a Spanish Tradition’, Studies in European Cinema vol. 6 no. 2–3, pp. 203–14. Lindo, Elvira (2008), ‘La vida de estrella importa’, El País, 21 September. Mackie, Rob (2009), ‘DVD Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona’, Guardian, 19 June, http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/19/vicky-cristinabarcelona-woody-allen-dvd-review?INTCMP=SRCH. Accessed 30 April 2012. MacNab, Geoffrey (2007), ‘The European Name Game’, Screen International, 16 February, pp. 16–17. Marín, Maribel (2007), ‘“Todo lo que hace respire verdad”’, El País, 24 January. Matthews, Peter (2006), ‘Lost in La Mancha’, Sight & Sound, September, pp. 42–3. Mira, Alberto (2005), ‘Belle Epoque’, in Alberto Mira (ed.), The Cinema of Spain and Portugal (London: Wallflower Press), pp. 199–207. Naughten, Rebecca (2010), ‘Spain Made Flesh: Reflections and Projections of the National in Contemporary Spanish Stardom, 1992–2007’, unpublished thesis, Newcastle University. Parkinson, David (2009), ‘Hollywood Loves Foreigners, So Long as They’re Not the Stars’, Guardian, 27 February, http://www.guardian.com/film/ filmblog/2009/feb/27/penelope-cruz-carmen-miranda?INTCMP=SRCH. Accessed 4 May 2012. Perriam, Chris (2003), Stars and Masculinities in Spanish Cinema: From Banderas to Bardem (Oxford: Oxford University Press). —— (2005), ‘Two Transnational Spanish Stars: Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz’, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas vol. 2 no. 1, pp. 29–43. —— (2011), ‘Javier Bardem: Costume, Crime and Commitment’, in Ann Davies (ed.), Spain on Screen: Developments in Contemporary Spanish Cinema (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 114–28. —— (2013), ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008): Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem Acting Strangely’, in Maria M. Delgado and Robin Fiddian (eds), Spanish Cinema 1973–2010 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 183–94.

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Peterson, Latoya (2010), ‘Sex and the City, Just Wright, Gender Bonding and RomCom Fantasy Worlds’, http://www.racialicious.com/2010/06/01/sexand-the-city-just-wright-gender-bonding-and-romcom-fantasy-worlds/#. Accessed 5 April 2011. Phillegitimate (2010), ‘On How Penelope Cruz is Not Realistic’, The Philiad, http://philiad.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/on-how-penelope-cruz-is-notrealistic/. Accessed 23 February 2012. Ponga, Paula (2006), ‘Penélope, salvajamente serena’, Fotogramas vol. 1949, March, pp. 86–94. Rivas, Jorge (2010), ‘Fox News: Penélope Cruz is Having an “Anchor Baby”’, http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/12/fox_news_penelope_cruz_is_ having_an_anchor_baby.html#. Accessed 5 April 2011. Rodríguez Marchante, Oti (2002), Amenábar, vocación de intriga (Madrid: Páginas de Espuma). Rota, Cristina (2009), ‘Una actriz que absorbe el placer y el dolor’, El País, 24 February. Secher, Benjamin (2011), ‘Mistress of Yogic Knots’, Daily Telegraph, 20 August. Sempere, Antonio (2000), Alejandro Amenábar: cine en las venas (Madrid: Nuer Ediciones). Shaw, Deborah (2007), ‘Blow: How a Film Created a Hero from a Top-Level Drug Trafficker and Blamed the “Columbians” for His Downfall’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video vol. 24, pp. 31–40. Sischy, Ingrid (2009), ‘The Passions of Penélope’, Vanity Fair, http://www. vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/11/penelope-cruz200911. Accessed 23 February 2012. Smith, Sean M. (2001), ‘Romantic Cruz’, Guardian, 2 March, http://www. guardian.co.uk/film/2001/mar/02/culture.features1?INTCMP=SRCH. Accessed 30 April 2012 —— and Paula Ponga (2001), ‘Pe seduce al mundo’, Fotogramas, June, pp. 96–110. Stone, Rob (2002), Spanish Cinema (Harlow: Longman). Triana-Toribio, Núria (2003), Spanish National Cinema (London: Routledge).

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Weinreich, Regina (2009), ‘Penelope Cruz in Red and White’, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/regina-weinreich/penelope-cruz-in-redand_b_363536.html. Accessed 20 July 2011. White, Anne M. (2003), ‘Seeing Double? The Remaking of Alejandro Amenábar’s Abre los ojos as Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky’, International Journal of Iberian Studies vol. 15 no. 3, pp. 187–96. White, James (2010), ‘Penelope Cruz Caught on Stranger Tides’, http://www.empireonline.com/News/story.asp?NID=26992. Accessed 16 January 2012. Wolcott, James (2009), ‘Vicky Cristina Bronze Toner’, Vanity Fair www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2009/03/so-finally-last-night-decided. Accessed 23 February 2012.

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FILMOGRAPHY

Feature films JAMÓN JAMÓN (José Juan Bigas Luna, Spain, 1992), Silvia. BELLE ÉPOQUE (Fernando Trueba, Spain/Portugal/France, 1992), Luz. EL LABERINTO GRIEGO (THE GREEK LABYRINTH, Rafael Alcázar, Spain, 1993), Elisa. LA RIBELLE (THE REBEL, Aurelio Grimaldi, Italy, 1993), Enza. PER AMORE, SOLO PER AMORE (FOR LOVE, ONLY FOR LOVE, Giovanni Veronese, Italy, 1993), Mary. ALEGRE MA NON TROPPO (Fernando Colomo, Spain, 1994), Salomé. TODO ES MENTIRA (IT’S ALL LIES, Álvaro Fernández Armero, Spain, 1994), Lucía. ENTRE ROJAS (WOMEN IN PRISON, Azucena Rodríguez, Spain, 1995), Lucía. BRUJAS (WITCHES, Álvaro Fernández Armero, Spain, 1996), Patricia. LA CELESTINA (Gerardo Vera, Spain, 1996), Melibea. MÁS QUE AMOR, FRENESÍ (NOT LOVE, JUST FRENZY, Alfonso Albacete, Miguel Bardem and David Menkes, Spain, 1996), Laura. EL AMOR PERJUDICA SERIAMENTE LA SALUD (LOVE CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH, Manuel Gómez Pereira, Spain/France, 1996), Young Diana.

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ET HJØRNE AF PARADIS (A SCENT OF PARADISE, Peter Ringgaard, Denmark/Sweden/Costa Rica/Spain, 1997), Doña Helena. CARNE TRÉMULA (LIVE FLESH, Pedro Almodóvar, Spain/France, 1997), Isabel. ABRE LOS OJOS (OPEN YOUR EYES, Alejandro Amenábar, Spain/France/Italy, 1997), Sofía. DON JUAN (Jacques Weber, Spain/France/Germany, 1998), Mathurine. LLUVIA EN LOS ZAPATOS (IF ONLY …/THE MAN WITH RAIN IN HIS SHOES, María Ripoll, Spain/France/Canada/UK/Luxemburg, 1998), Louise. TALK OF ANGELS (Nick Hamm, USA, 1998), Pilar. LA NIÑA DE TUS OJOS (THE GIRL OF YOUR DREAMS, Fernando Trueba, Spain/Czech Republic, 1998), Macarena Granada. THE HI-LO COUNTRY (Stephen Frears, UK/USA, 1998), Josepha O’Neil. TODO SOBRE MI MADRE (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, Pedro Almodóvar, Spain/France, 1999), Rosa. VOLAVÉRUNT (Bigas Luna, Spain/France, 1999), Pepita Tudó. WOMAN ON TOP (Fina Torres, USA, 2000), Isabella Oliveira ALL THE PRETTY HORSES (Billy Bob Thornton, USA, 2000), Alejandra. BLOW (Ted Demme, USA, 2001), Mirtha Jung. CAPTAIN CORELLI’S MANDOLIN (John Madden, USA/France/UK, 2001), Pelagia. SIN NOTICIAS DE DIOS (DON’T TEMPT ME, Agustín Díaz Yanes, Spain/France, 2001), Carmen Ramos. VANILLA SKY (Cameron Crowe, USA, 2001), Sofía Serrano. WAKING UP IN RENO (Jordan Brady, USA, 2002), Brenda. MASKED AND ANONYMOUS (Larry Charles, USA/UK, 2003), Pagan Lace. FANFAN LA TULIPE (Gérard Krawczyk, France, 2003), Adeline La Franchise. GOTHIKA (Matthieu Kassovitz, USA, 2003), Chloe.

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135

NON TI MUOVERE (DON’T MOVE, Sergio Castellitto, Italy/Spain/UK, 2004), Italia. HEAD IN THE CLOUDS (John Duigan, UK/Canada, 2004), Mia. NOEL (Chazz Palminteri, USA, 2004), Nina. SAHARA (Breck Eisner, USA/Spain/Germany/UK, 2005), Eva Rojas. CHROMOPHOBIA (Martha Fiennes, UK/France, 2005), Gloria. BANDIDAS (Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, France, 2006), María Álvarez. VOLVER (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2006), Raimunda. THE GOOD NIGHT (Jake Paltrow, Germany/UK, 2007), Anna/Melodia. ELEGY (Isabel Coixet, USA, 2008), Consuela. VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (Woody Allen, USA/Spain, 2008), María Elena. MANOLETE (THE PASSION WITHIN, Menno Meyjes, Spain/UK/France, 2008), Lupe Sino. LOS ABRAZOS ROTOS (BROKEN EMBRACES, Pedro Almodóvar, Spain/UK, 2009), Lena. NINE (Rob Marshall, USA/Italy, 2009), Carla. SEX AND THE CITY 2 (Michael Patrick King, USA/Australia, 2010), Carmen. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES (Rob Marshall, USA, 2011), Angelica Teach. TO ROME WITH LOVE (Woody Allen, Italy/USA/Spain, 2012), Anna. VENUTO AL MONDO (TWICE BORN, Sergio Castellitto, Italy/Spain, 2012), Gemma.

TV series SÉRIE ROSE (1991), Daphné/Javottre/Juliette. FRAMED (1992), Lola.

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Short films, music videos Mecano, ‘La fuerza del destino’ (1992). LA CONCEJALA ANTROPÓFAGA (THE CANNIBALISTIC COUNCILLOR, Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2009), Pina.

Voiceovers G-FORCE (Hoyt Yeatman, USA, 2009), Juarez.

Producer VENUTO AL MONDO (TWICE BORN, Sergio Castellitto, Italy/Spain, 2012).

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137

INDEX

A abrazos rotos, Los (Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodóvar, 2009) 96, 97, 99, 111–22 Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes, Alejandro Amenábar, 1997) 41, 66, 80–95, 113 Abril, Victoria 23, 113, 116 All the Pretty Horses (Billy Bob Thornton, 2000) 67 Allen, Woody 3, 4, 8, 43, 55, 57, 60, 62, 97, 98, 103, 116, 125 Allinson, Mark 8, 9, 10 Almodóvar, Pedro 4, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 42, 93, 96, 97–100, 101–4, 106, 109, 110, 111, 112–18, 120, 121, 122, 125 Amenábar, Alejandro 41, 80, 82–3, 84, 88, 89, 90, 93

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amor perjudica seriamente la salud, El (Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health, Manuel Gómez Pereira, 1996) 15, 41 Anaya, Elena 97, 115 Andalusische Nächte (Andalusian Nights, Herbert Maisch, 1938) 52 Argentina, Imperio 8, 44–7, 52–3, 54 arthouse cinema 3, 4, 6 ¡Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Pedro Almodóvar, 1990) 98, 99 B Bale, Christian 71, 72, 73 Banderas, Antonio 6 Bandidas (Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, 2006) 1, 38, 67

Bardem, Javier 3, 4, 5, 7, 18, 54, 56, 61, 69, 98, 103 Bautista, Aurora 8 Belle Époque (Fernando Trueba, 1992) 4, 6, 14, 16, 17, 22, 27, 28–40, 41–2, 43, 54, 70, 123 Bellísima (Luchino Visconti, 1951) 104 Bigas Luna, José Juan 6, 16, 17, 18, 26, 27, 28, 34 Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) 81 Blow (Ted Demme, 2001) 2, 38, 67–8 Bonham-Carter, Helena 70 C Cage, Nicholas 4, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76 Camino, Mercedes 102, 105 Cano, Nacho 7

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (John Madden, 2001) 23, 29, 66, 67, 70–80, 94, 95 Carmen, la de Triana (Carmen, the Girl from Triana, Florián Rey, 1938) 45–6, 54, 60 Carne trémula (Live Flesh, Pedro Almodóvar, 1997) 42, 97 castration 20–2, 24, 25, 36, 87–8, 89 Catalonia 56, 57 celestina, La (Gerardo Vera, 1996) 41 Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988) 29, 69 Colmeiro, José 37 Crawford, Joan 102 Cruise, Tom 3, 9, 24, 68, 72, 82–3, 84, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94 Cukor, George 97 D Damon, Matt 4, 72 Deleyto, Celestino 17, 25–6, 31 Diaz, Cameron 72, 85 Dueñas, Lola 99, 100 E edades de Lulú, Las (The Ages of Lulu, Bigas Luna, 1990) 16, 18 Elegy (Isabel Coixet, 2008) 2

Entre rojas (Azucena Rodríguez, 1995) 4, 23–4, 41 espíritu de la colmena, El (Spirit of the Beehive, Víctor Erice, 1973) 80–1 European cinema 2–3, 86, 104, 105 European star system 3, 78, 92, 100, 103–5 Evans, Peter W. 22–4, 31–2, 35, 38–9, 42, 115, 120 F Fanfan la Tulipe (Gerard Krawczyk, 2003) 105 Feenstra, Pietsie 51–2 flor de mi secreto, La (The Flower of My Secret, Pedro Almodóvar, 1995) 99 Fox News 69 Frears, Stephen 104 French Connection, The (William Friedkin, 1971) 9 G Game, The (David Fincher, 1997) 81 Gautier, Théophile 58 Gil, Ariadna 30, 34 Goebbels, Josef 43–4, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 93 Gothika (Mathieu Kassovitz, 2003) 64, 67 Goya awards 54, 103

H Hardcastle, Anne 48, 49, 51 Harlow, Jean 55 Head in the Clouds (John Duigan, 2004) 71 Hepburn, Audrey 87, 104 Hepburn, Katharine 97 Hi–Lo Country, The (Stephen Frears, 1998) 67, 104 Hispanic identity 1–2, 7–8, 9, 13, 25, 66–70 Hitler, Adolf 44, 46 Hollywood 1–3, 4–6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 47, 64, 65, 66, 72, 81, 86, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 102–3, 105, 123, 124, 126 Hurt, John 71, 72–3 J Jamón jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992) 3, 6, 7, 14, 16, 17, 18–28, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 47, 54, 88, 98, 102, 121, 123 Jordan, Barry 8, 9–10, 35, 36–7 K Keaton, Diane 97 Kidman, Nicole 3, 24, 68, 72, 82, 89 Kika (Pedro Almodóvar, 1993) 99

INDEX

139

Knollmueller, Marit 84 Krawczyk, Gerard 105 L Lampreave, Chus 99 Landa, Alfredo 8 language 53, 64–5, 73–5, 86, 93 ley del deseo, La (Law of Desire, Pedro Almodóvar, 1987) 112 Lindo, Elvira 104, 106, 116 Lollobrigida, Gina 105 Lombard, Carole 55 Loren, Sophia 104 M Madden, John 75, 76, 77, 79 Magnani, Anna 78, 104 mala educación, La (Bad Education, Pedro Almodóvar, 2004) 112 Marisol 9 Martínez, Fele 6, 80 Matrix, The (Andy and Lana Wachowski, 1999) 81 Matthews, Peter 102 Maura, Carmen 100, 101, 103, 104, 113, 116, 120 McConaughey, Matthew 3 Mecano 6, 7 Mediterraneo (Gabriele Salvatores, 1991) 29, 69

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Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) 102 Mira, Alberto 36, 37 Mollà, Jordi 18, 27, 67, 68 Montiel, Sara 9, 66 Morente, Estrella 110 Morrissey, David 74 Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Pedro Almodóvar, 1988) 99, 101, 112, 114, 120 muse 62, 97, 99, 111, 112–13, 115–17, 120, 121, 123, 125 N Nimri, Najwa 80, 85 niña de tus ojos, La (The Girl of Your Dreams, Fernando Trueba, 1998) 4, 22–3, 42, 43–54, 55, 65, 70, 89, 93 Noel (Chazz Palminteri, 2004) 67 Noriega, Eduardo 6, 80 O Oscars 3, 6, 28, 41, 54, 56, 60, 61, 64–5, 70, 79, 98, 101, 103, 125 otherness 2, 3, 11, 13, 36, 46, 47, 48, 56, 57–8, 62, 63–4, 65, 66–95, 96, 124, 125

Others, The (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001) 82, 89 P Palma, Rossy de 99 Papas, Irene 74 Paredes, Marisa 113, 116 Perriam, Chris 5, 6, 58, 62, 63, 73, 124 piel que habito, La (The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodóvar, 2011) 97, 115 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Rob Marshall, 2011) 2, 98 Portillo, Blanca 101, 103, 120 postino, Il (Michael Radford, 1994) 69 Q ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? (What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Pedro Almodóvar, 1984) 99 R Racialicious 68 Rey, Fernando 9 Rey, Florián 44, 45 Rodríguez Zapatero, José Luis 56 romantic relationships 3–4, 6, 7, 10, 66, 72–3, 83, 88, 89, 94, 123

Roth, Cecilia 113, 116 S Sahara (Breck Eisner, 2005) 3 Sánchez-Gijón, Aitana 28 Sarasola, Gigi 7 Sevilla, Carmen 8 Sex and the City (TV series) 115 Sex and the City 2: The Movie (Michael Patrick King, 2010) 68, 96 Shaw, Deborah 67, 68 Sischy, Ingrid 55, 97 Spanish cinema 2, 4, 5–9, 34, 41, 42, 44, 47, 48, 52, 54, 56, 81, 93, 116 Spanish Civil War 4, 6, 29, 30, 37, 42, 44, 50 Spanish history 15, 42, 52, 65 Spanish star system 6–7, 8–9, 81 Stone, Rob 5, 23, 47, 82, 83, 84, 87

T Tacones lejanos (High Heels, Pedro Almodóvar, 1991) 99 Tesis (Thesis, Alejandro Amenábar, 1995) 41, 80–1 To Rome With Love (Woody Allen, 2012) 62 Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother, Pedro Almodóvar, 1999) 97, 99, 101, 106 Torrent, Ana 80–1, 82 Trueba, Fernando 6, 17, 29, 35, 44, 45, 47, 53, 127 V Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001) 3, 41, 66, 67, 72, 80–95, 98, 113, 124 Vega, Paz 6 Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) 9, 66

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) 84, 88 Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008) 3, 38, 43, 54–65, 68, 76, 78, 79, 95, 96, 98, 103, 116, 125, 126 Volavérunt (Bigas Luna, 1999) 27–8, 71 Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006) 3, 55, 78, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100–11, 113, 114, 116, 118, 121, 125–6 W Watling, Leonor 6 Welch, Christopher Evan 57, 64 White, Anne 83, 86–7 Woman on Top (Fina Torres, 2000) 2, 67 Y youth 6, 12, 14–40, 98, 99, 100

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List of Illustrations While considerable effort has been made to correctly identify the copyright holders, this has not been possible in all cases. We apologise for any apparent negligence and any omissions or corrections brought to our attention will be remedied in any future editions. Todo sobre mi madre, © El Deseo/© Renn Productions/© France 2 Cinéma; El amor perjudica seriamente la salud, D.M.V.B. Films/Le Studio Canal+/Boca Boca Producciones/Sogetel; Jamón, jamón, © Lolafilms; Entre rojas, Fernando Colomo P.C./Lucas Editiones; Volavérunt, Mate Producciones; Belle Époque, © Fernando Trueba P.C.; Carmen, la de Triana, Hispano-Film Produktion; La niña de tus ojos, CARTEL/Lolafilms/Fernando Trueba P.C.; Vicky Cristina Barcelona, © Gravier Productions Inc./© S.L. MediaProducción; Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, © Universal Studios/© Studiocanal/© Miramax Film Corp.; Abre los ojos, Sociedad General de Cine S.A./Las Producciones del Escorpión S.L./Les Films Alain Sarde/Lucky Red/Sogetel; Vanilla Sky, © Paramount Pictures Corporation; Volver, © El Deseo; Los abrazos rotos, © El Deseo.