Elitism and populism in Spanish Auteur cinema of the nineties

Abstract

In this paper I intend to discuss the position of Spanish auteurs of the nineties in relation to the popular/elite divide, with particular attention to the works of Pedro Almodóvar, Julio Medem and Álex de la Iglesia. It is my contention that, following Almodóvar’s successful fusion of traditional auteur poetics and popular genres, Spanish film auteurs are no longer constrained to those strategies devised by directors such as Buñuel, Erice or Saura, which were unambiguously packaged as art-house cinema and addressed to an educated and discerning audience. Those strategies, including self-reference, avoidance of classical genres and a Barthesian writerly textuality, are still used by some of the new auteurs such as Julio Medem, Isabel Coixet or Álex de la Iglesia; but others do rehearse modes of auteurism that are accessible to both educated and popular audiences, to spectators who love cinema as an art form and also to spectators who pay to be entertained. Auteurism, as other forms of high art, can no longer be reduced to a form of class elitism. Spanish auteurism still is operative in at least three different contexts: as a European (that is, non Hollywood) elitism, as an emblem of high art, and as a commodified label that sustains a director-based star system. The construction of auteurism in contemporary Spanish film is based on different combinations of all three perspectives, and it is predicated on the assumption that Spanish audiences place a strong demand on auteurism in national films.