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Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2003

Transatlantic Traffic in Recent Mexican Films

PAUL JULIAN SMITH

In this paper I treat the recent resurgence of Mexican cinema (praised fromKinetoscopio to The Economist) as a test case for Manuel Castells’s theory of ‘theinteraction between technology-induced globalization, the power of identity(gender, religious, national, ethnic, territorial, socio-biological), and the institu-tions of the state’ (1997, p. 2). Focusing on relations between Mexico and Spain,I examine the various and overlapping regulatory regimes which still frameaudiovisual production in Europe and Latin America; address the increasinglypowerful commercial dimension by offering corporate studies of two innovativeMexican producers, Altavista and Anhelo; and, finally, give an account of thetwo best known films in the so-called renaissance: Amores perros and Y tu mamatambien. While these two famous features are not technically co-productions (andindeed have been praised for their sense of locality) I argue that they participatein a newly intense economic and cultural exchange between Latin America andEurope through the transatlantic reach of their parent companies (CompanıaIberoamericana de Entretenimiento [CIE] and Omnilife, respectively) and theiridiosyncratic casting of Spanish actresses in central roles.

The last two years have seen frequent, if contradictory, accounts in the tradepress of this Ibero-American traffic, in which Hollywood is often a third cornerin a golden triangle. In its annual survey published on 24 December 2001, Varietywrote that ‘Homegrown pix gain[ed] in Europe’, especially in Spain wheremarket share increased from 10% to 19%. However the true picture was morecomplex. Much of this gain was due to a film branded a ‘hybrid’: AlejandroAmenabar’s English-speaking The Others. And the production boom remained‘extremely fragile’ with many of the 91 theatrically released Spanish featuresdisappearing without trace. Corporate moves in all directions also complicatedthe scene. Telefonica Media, a division of the Spanish communications giantbased in Miami, took control of leading Spanish producer LolaFilms, aiming to‘transform it into a major content creator and provider for the internationalSpanish-speaking market’ (Screen International, 26 November 1999). MeanwhileSony ‘beef[ed] up Spanish production’, aiming to make films in Spain and inSpanish ‘primarily for the local market but [also to] be distributed overseas’ (SI,28 September 2001). Sogecable (which co-produced ‘box-office phenomenon’ TheOthers with Tom Cruise) ‘started an international drive’ to back ‘more ambitiousprojects’ (SI, 28 September 2001). Meanwhile ‘Spanish [producers] eye[d] up USsuitors’ (SI, 12 October 2001) as Sony was joined by Buena Vista International inco-producing local films in Spain. The attraction here was once more thetransatlantic connection. ‘Latin America’, writes SI, ‘is a huge secondary marketwhich makes Spanish-language films potentially more lucrative than German- or

ISSN 1356-9325 print/ISSN 1469-9575 online/03/030389–12 2003 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/13569320310001629531

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French-language product’. One executive cautions that ‘films made in Spain donot easily translate to the Spanish-speaking world’ but still confirms that theLatin American market is ‘an added lure’. The gendered or eroticized languagehere (‘suitors’, ‘lure’) is not infrequent in such commercial contexts. Festivalsjoined in the transatlantic love affair. In 2001 San Sebastian gave its major prizeto a Latin American feature for the third time in four years (SI, 12 October 2001).The 17th Muestra de Cine Mexicano in Guadalajara repayed the complimentwith a large Spanish selection (‘Cine por la red’, 27 February 2002).

Focus 2000, the annual survey of the industry produced by the Strasbourg-based European Audiovisual Observatory, gives a more nuanced picture at thestart of the millennium. Spanish feature production peaked at 91 in 1995 beforedeclining to 65 in 1998 and rising to 82 in 1999. Underlying these figures,however, is a steeper decline in ‘100% national’ films and a consistent increasein co-productions, from 25 to 36 in the same period. Cinema admissions alsocontinued their steady rise, almost doubling during the course of the 1990s from78 million to 131 million. Market share for 1999 is given as: national 13.8%, US64.43%, and ‘other’ 21.75%. This inflated last statistic was due to two ‘pan-At-lantic’ features counted as British: the latest James Bond and romantic comedyNotting Hill, which cast Julia Roberts in the undemanding role of a Hollywoodstar on location in London.

The relatively small size of the Mexican market is seen from the Observatory’sstatistics for Latin America. While Mexico’s population is more than double thatof Spain (100 million to 39 million), its GDP is lower, as are its cinemaadmissions (120 million to the Spanish 131) and, overwhelmingly, its featureproduction which fluctuates alarmingly from three (1996), to 15 (1997), to seven(1998). Interestingly, however, while Mexico’s figure for admissions per inhabi-tant might seem low at 1.2 compared with cinephile Spaniards’ 3.36 (one of thehighest in Europe), Mexicans remain the keenest filmgoers in Latin America.Mexico also has the greatest number of screens in the continent, exceeding morepopulous Brazil by a considerable margin. Moreover attendance grew in Mexicoby 7% compared with the previous year. It is clear, then, that in spite ofdifferences in scale, Spain and Mexico have much in common, with cinema-go-ing more frequent, more profitable and faster growing at home than in neigh-bouring nations.

Let us move now to the regulatory frameworks that serve, still, to frame thesecommercial trends. The EU’s European Film Forum met in Strasbourg in 2000,after hosting a conference on cooperation between Europe and Latin America.The opening statement for this meeting of professionals was a reminder of theaudiovisual trade deficit between the EU and the US: €7 billion in 1998(European Film Forum 1). While the topic for the round table was ‘Globalizationand Cultural Diversity’, the watchwords were distinctly European: ‘film heri-tage’ and ‘quality cinema’. A proposed Cinema Directive made such preconcep-tions clear:

Cultural identity is the common reference of the members of a com-munity or of a nation and the essential base of their democratic choices;any breach of the cultural or linguistic identity of a community shall besusceptible [sic] to affect the founding principle of the Union. (p. 12)

Or again:

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The underscoring of the common cultural heritage justifies the organi-zation, in each member state, of the collection and conservation of allfilms by the creation of a compulsory deposit. (p. 13)

If film is assumed, immediately, to reflect a cultural or linguistic identity thatdeserves and requires preservation (with the statutory deposit signalling theheritage model with a vengeance), then the definition of ‘European cinemato-graphic works’ is more problematic. On the one hand, and in keeping with thefamiliar argument of ‘cultural exception’, films ‘which are characterized by ahigh level of creativity and originality, cannot be considered as interchangeableor substitutable goods from the point of view of the consumer and must betreated in accordance with their specificity’ (p. 14). On the other hand thenecessary conditions for achieving such transcendent status are embarrassinglyconcrete, even mechanical. ‘European films’ must be spoken in one of thelanguages of the EU (with the exception of ‘any parts of the dialogue which thescreenplay requires to be in another language’); and they must achieve at least15 points on a scale of 19, calculated on the basis of the nationalities of thosecreators, performers, and technicians who contribute to the production. Thus adirector or ‘first role’ scores a high 3, a screenwriter or ‘second role’ a middling2, and a set designer or shooting location a lowly 1.

As expected, perhaps, co-production is a particular problem here. Veteranauteur Werner Herzog complained in his intervention that EU rules preventedhim from filming a brief sequence of the unique fauna in Easter Island (p. 24).Council of Europe guide lines specify that to be eligible for the once-generousstate support known as ‘advance on receipts’ a partner in a co-production cannotexceed 80% or be lower than 10% of total budget (Council of Europe). HoweverEurimages, the funding body of which Spain is a member, made changes in2000, dividing the competition into two separate schemes: ‘one for films withreal circulation potential; one for films reflecting the cultural diversity ofEuropean cinema’. While officials claimed that ‘the intention is not to supportcommercial films on the one hand and cultural films on the other’, the selectioncriteria are clearly differentiated: ‘the first scheme assesses the commercialpotential of a project’, the second focuses on ‘a project’s artistic and culturalvalue’. Curiously enough the criteria are ‘less strict’ in the second, art housecategory. While the Council grandly announces ‘a new philosophy’ (‘the mainchange [is] the emphasis on the film’s effective financing and commitments’), itsattached list of projects is less than inspiring, including as it does such relativelydisappointing co-productions as, on the ‘commercial’ side, Fernando Trueba’s Elembrujo de Shanghai (Spain–France) and, on the ‘cultural’ side, Ventura Pons’sEnglish-language Food of Love (Spain–Germany). Fernando Pino Solanas’sAfrodita, el sabor del amor is the only Hispano-American project listed, matchingArgentina with no fewer than four European suitors, including Spain.

Spain’s position is clearly anomalous here, keen as it is to establish culturaland commercial links with Latin America, an ambition not always aided by EUinflexibility over funding. Yet Madrid’s audiovisual legislation betrays the sametensions between culture and commerce that we have seen in Brussels andStrasbourg. The law to support and promote cinema of 9 July 2001 echoesEuropean tropes. It begins:

La creacion cinematografica y audiovisual es parte destacada de la

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cultura y tiene una importancia decisiva en el mantenimiento de ladiversidad cultural. El cine presenta en la sociedad actual una dimen-sion cultural de primera magnitud, no solo como patrimonio, tambiencomo proyeccion de nuestro paıs en el exterior, como expresion de supersonalidad, de sus historias, formando parte de la identidad viva deun paıs … . Como forma reconocida de expresion informativa, docu-mental, y creativa, es obligacion velar por la conservacion de las obrascinematograficas y audiovisuales y crear cauces e incentivos para quesu desarrollo sea possible … . (Toda la ley)[Audiovisual and film production is an important part of culture andhas a decisive importance in the maintenance of cultural diversity.Cinema has a cultural dimension of the first magnitude in contempor-ary society, not just as a form of cultural patrimony but as theprojection of the image of our country abroad and the expression of itspersonality, and its various histories, thus forming part of its livingidentity … . As an acknowledged form of informational, documentaryand creative expression, there is an obligation to preserve works ofcinema and other audiovisual forms and to create channels and incen-tives for its development … .]

Cultural identity is downplayed, however, in the decree issued just a year later(14 June 2002). Here changes in funding aim to establish incentives for indepen-dent production houses and measures to ensure their competitiveness. While‘cultural diversity’ is mentioned once more (clearly in its European meaning of‘state resistance to US hegemony’), more significant is the creation of a Comitede analisis y seguimiento del mercado (Committee for Market Tracking andAnalysis) whose role is to ensure industrial ‘transparency’ (Noticias). Moreoverthe decree states explicitly that this reform of regulations is prompted byco-productions, which call into question the national identity of cinematicworks, the main criterion cinema has been required to preserve at home and toproject abroad.

In fact attempts to construct a transatlantic regulatory regime had been madethroughout the 1990s. A veritable alphabet soup of acronyms came into beingafter CACI (the Conferencia de Autoridades Cinematograficas de Iberoamerica)established a film fund in 1989. The aim of the programme, baptized Ibermedia,was to construct an ‘Iberoamerican Visual Space’ through training and distri-bution, as well as co-production (Ibermedia). Of the 13 original countries ofCACI, seven established the Unidad Tecnica Ibermedia (UTI) to coordinate aproduction slate from 1998 to 2002. In its first year Ibermedia lent financialsupport to 118 projects. These state-funded initiatives overlapped with industryevents, such as MIDIA (Mercado Iberoamericana de la Industria Audiovisual),which in 1998 held its first ‘co-production market’, also in Madrid (MIDIA).

A co-production agreement between Spain and Mexico had been drawn up asearly as 1995, with the diplomatic aim of ‘fortalecer los lazos de colaboracion’[strengthening collaborative links] between the two countries (Acuerdo decoproduccion). One bureaucratic precondition here for the greenlighting ofprojects is the approval of the two official film institutes (ICAA and IMCINE).In order to be considered a ‘national’ picture in both countries (and thus toqualify for state subsidy) all projects are obliged to incorporate Mexicans and

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Spaniards at the level of both cast and crew, preferably in proportion to thepercentage of funding offered by each country: ‘En principio, la aportacion decada pais incluira, por lo menos, un elemento considerado como creativo, unactor en papel principal y un actor en papel secundario o un tecnico cualificado[In principle, the contribution of each country will include at the least a creativeelement, an actor in a principal role and one in a supporting role, and a qualifiedtechnician.] While no point system exists as in the European scheme, elementssuch as the shooting location are specified. Studios and lab facilities must alsobe within the territory of the majority partner in the project. State prestige, suchas the attribution of national origin at festivals (will a feature be billed asMexico-Spanish or Hispano-Mexican?), thus rubs shoulders with industrialprotectionism (employment opportunities for actors and technicians) in theconflictive quest to create a common audiovisual space.

It is perhaps no surprise that film legislation enacted by successive Mexicanpresidents parallels the progressive commercialization of its Spanish counter-parts. The Salinas government’s Ley Federal de Cinematografıa still began bystressing that film is ‘un vehıculo de expresion artıstica y educativa, y constituyeuna actividad cultural primordial, sin menoscabo del aspecto comercial que le escaracterıstico [a vehicle for artistic and educational expression and constitutes acultural activity of the first order, without denigrating the commercial aspectwhich is characteristic of it]’. It went on to define film production as:

… una actividad de interes social … por expresar la cultura mexicana yfortalecer los vınculos de identidad nacional entre los diferentes gruposque la conforman. Por tanto, el Estado fomentara su desarrollo paracumplir su funcion de fortalecer la composicion pluricultural de lanacion mexicana. (Salinas)[… an activity of importance to society … for expressing Mexican cul-ture and strengthening the relations of identity between the differentgroups that comprise it. The State will therefore encourage its develop-ment with the aim of strengthening the multicultural composition ofthe Mexican nation.]

This gesture towards multiculturalism (in the US sense), comparable to theSpanish mention of the plural ‘histories’ of the nation, is undermined, however,by the requirement that children’s and educational films, the only foreignfeatures not subtitled, must be dubbed into Spanish in order to preserve‘national linguistic identity’. Spanish is thus assumed to be the only languagespoken in a ‘multicultural’ Mexico.

Vicente Fox signed a new Reglamento of the same law (Fox). While protection-ism is still present (with exhibitors required to observe a 10% quota for ‘national’films) the culturalist language of artistic expression and social benefit is gener-ally omitted. One exception is the requirement that a copy of all Mexicanfeatures be lodged with the Cineteca, which continues to serve as a European-style repository of national heritage.

It only seems fair to mention at this point a representative product of theregulatory regime that immediately preceded the so-called Mexican renaissance.El colonel no tiene quien le escriba of 1999 is a Mexican–Spanish–French co-pro-duction funded by no fewer than eight public and private sources includingIMCINE and the Centre National de la Cinematographie. Based of course on a

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prestigious source text by Garcıa Marquez, it is directed by Arturo Ripstein, oneof the few Mexican auteurs to have built up a substantial and distinctive body ofwork over several decades. In accordance with the various state regulations, itfeatures a multinational cast, boasting Mexican Salma Hayek and SpaniardMarisa Paredes in the main female roles. Decorative in mise en scene, stately inpace and accepted for official competition at Cannes, El coronel has ‘quality’stamped all over it. Indeed one of its funding bodies is El fondo para laproduccion cinematografica de calidad [Fund for Quality Film Production]. Yetit was a commercial and, arguably, artistic disappointment, failing to find anaudience. If European co-productions have long been reviled as ‘Europuddings’,and UK films destined for the US market newly dismissed as ‘Nato-puddings’,then El coronel is perhaps a ‘tortilla soup’, with distinctly Colombian, Mexican orSpanish ingredients stirred into an undifferentiated and undistinguished ‘Iber-median’ brew.

I will argue later that the casting of a foreign female star persists problemati-cally in recent Mexican films of wholly ‘national’ production. What is importanthere is to note that this traffic in women has become identified with theproverbially deracinated and despised co-production. El Paıs (16 November2001) writes of young actress Natalia Verbeke, whose ‘perfecto, castizo, inequıv-oco, y bien entonado espanol [perfect, pure, error-free and well spoken Spanish]’in real life contrasts with her ‘elles arrastradas [dragged out ‘Ls’]’ in BuenosAires-set romantic comedy El hijo de la novia: ‘no es el tıpico papel de espanolacamuflada en un paıs latinoamericano, artimana que siempre delata la coproduc-cion escondida detras [it’s not the typical role where a Spanish woman iscamouflaged for the part of a Latin American, a piece of deception that alwaysbetrays the co-production hidden behind] ‘ (Hijo de la novia). Authentic andundubbed, she is as ‘local’ as her Argentine colleagues. Linguistic and culturalpurity is celebrated here, even as the Spanish journalist takes pride in an actresswho has managed to ‘hacer las Americas (Latinas)’.

Continuing this gendered rhetoric, a territory report by Screen International inFebruary 2002 names Mexico ‘the darling of Latin America’. According to thecorrespondent, Mexican cinema has indeed revived in all three areas of pro-duction (with market share rising from 3% to 20%), distribution (with localcompanies spending unprecedented sums on prints and advertising), and exhi-bition (with old and unattractive theatres renewed for a wealthier and moreeducated audience). This change has coincided with the decline of the old statistmodel of protection–preservation: for the first time private investment hasexceeded public support. The renaissance is, however, dependent on a smallnumber of successful titles, especially Amores perros and Y tu mama tambien, bothof which were fully funded from private Mexican sources.

I would like to begin my case studies of these films by making a number ofpropositions about them, which are widely accepted but somewhat paradoxical.First, both films are unqualified successes, both artistically (at festivals) andcommercially (at the international box office), qualities which, as we have seenfrom government regulation, are often held to be mutually exclusive. Second,they are films held to be representative of their national origin (SI calls its survey‘New Mexico’), yet they are clearly indebted to US narrative genres (the intricate,interlocking structure of Pulp Fiction and the apparently casual episodic form ofthe road movie, respectively). Third, they are films that openly display their

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break with the past (‘New Mexico’, once more) in relation to both state subsidyand the PRI-identified art cinema of, say, Ripstein, yet they still aspire torecognition from the establishment (Amores won multiple Ariels; Mama excludeditself from consideration as a protest against the lack of transparency in thevoting process). Finally, the two films boast both of their private funding and ofthe artistic freedom allowed their directors. This neatly reverses the European orPRI-ista protection–promotion model whereby only state intervention couldguarantee the creative liberty of smaller nations whose artistic heritage isbelieved to be threatened by mercenary US capitalism.

Clearly, directors such as Gonzalez Inarritu and Cuaron no longer view theirrelationship with the US in the antagonistic terms of earlier Mexican directors.Both have loudly proclaimed (with Guillermo del Toro) their refusal to beconfined to a Latin ghetto and their freedom to travel to realize their projects. Ifwe step back a minute, however, from the films themselves we can examine thecorporate ethos of new producers AltaVista and Anhelo, in relation to theirparent companies, CIE and Omnilife.

The stated aims of both AltaVista and Anhelo are to combine artistic inno-vation with commercial viability, in a way that statist regulation has foundimpossible, even as the state now struggles to make national audiovisualindustries more competitive. This is how AltaVista presents itself on its modestwebsite:

Altavista films fundada en 1999 esta dedicada a la produccion depelıculas dirigidas al publico de habla hispana. Se crea a partir delcreciente interes del publico nacional de verse reflejado en las produc-ciones del paıs; esto se ha modificado a traves del tiempo ya que elcambio completo y radical de la infraestructura de la exhibicion hacambiado la demografıa cinefila de nuestro paıs … . AltavistaFilms … ha logrado ser una opcion real y viable para cualquier cineastainteresado en hacer una pelıcula de calidad internacional en Mexico.(Altavista)[Altavista Films, set up in 1999, is dedicated to the production of filmsaimed at a Spanish-speaking audience. It has been created in the lightof the growing interest of the national audience in seeing itself reflectedin productions coming out of the country. This has changed over timegiven that the radical change in screening and distribution infrastruc-ture has changed the demography of cinemagoers in the country … .Altavista Films … has come to represent a real, viable option for anyfilmmaker interested in producing a film of international quality inMexico.]

Likewise in Amores perros’s stylish press kit, distributed at Cannes, executiveproducer Martha Sosa describes the young company in the following terms: ‘anew option for producing high quality films in Mexico aimed at box-officesuccess’ (Amores perros). What is striking here is the stress on the local, in bothproduction and reception. Altavista’s target is a Mexican and Spanish-speakingaudience that wishes to recognize itself on screen—though this public is under-stood not in the abstract or ideal terms of state diplomacy but in direct relationto the new demographic that frequents the recently upgraded cinemas. If, as inSpain, filmgoing has in the course of the 1990s become a more socially select

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activity, then it makes both commercial and artistic sense to aim for ‘quality’,here redefined problematically in relation to box office. Any internationalaudience, seduced perhaps by these higher production values, is cited only as anafterthought. The localist philosophy extends to funding: Altavista features wereintended to cover their modest budgets in the Mexican market and five out ofthe first seven were indeed successful at home, an impressive track record.

There is a broader context, however. Altavista’s parent company is EstudioMexico, which is in turn a part of CIE. Amores perros’s producers exploited thepotential of ‘vertical integration’ which is proudly announced on CIE’s websiteas the secret of the corporation’s success (CIE). The biggest live entertainmentcompany in Mexico, CIE not only arranges tours by, say, the Rolling Stones butalso owns the stadiums in which they play, the franchise which sells the ticketsand even the drinks consumed during the concert. Likewise little Altavistaenjoyed the synergy of its sibling companies Nuvision, the distributor of Amoresperros, and CIE’s musical subsidiaries, which marketed the soundtrack andstaged concerts by bands featured in the film. Trailers ran on video screens inHard Rock Cafes, another CIE associate. Promotion also relied heavily onGonzalez Inarritu’s own professional background in the three areas of radio,television and advertising. This professionalization of marketing is not onlyimpossible to achieve through statist bureaucracy. It is also one of the threecommercial criteria often held to distinguish and disadvantage national cinemasin comparison with Hollywood, the others being the absence of a viable starsystem and the lack of involvement by producers in the creative process.

Intentionally or not, Altavista fulfilled all three criteria. Cannily marketed inMexico (exploiting foreign festival success to enhance domestic expectation),Amores perros also launched Gael Garcıa as the unchallenged young cinematicidol; and its producer Sosa is actively involved in seeking out and shaping newprojects. Less obvious is the transatlantic factor here. CIE now operates inArgentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Spain. And Estudio Mexico and Nuvi-sion recently launched a US offshoot, aiming to distribute films from both LatinAmerica and Spain in association with Spanish media conglomerate PRISA(Estudio Mexico Prisa).

The parent company of Anhelo, fledgling producer of Y tu mama tambien, alsohas this ‘triangular’ business base. The home page of Omnilife (motto ‘Gente quecuida a la gente [People who look after people]’) features thumbnails of the flagsof the nine Latin American countries, in which its nutritional supplements aredistributed, plus those of the US and Spain (Omnilefe). Populist CEO JorgeVergara, executive producer with Cuaron of Mama, smartly casual in a black suitand no tie, welcomes visitors to the site, pitching products that will ‘change thelives’ of Iberoamerican consumers through Omnilife’s proclaimed combinationof ancient herbal tradition and nutritional high tech. Just one of a dozensubsidiaries of the voracious Omnilife, Anhelo has, like Altavista, opted for‘quality’, with its excellent second feature, Guillermo del Toro’s El espinazo deldiablo, described as a co-production with the ‘award-winning Spanish directorPedro Almodovar’. Like CIE, Omnilife cannily markets the engaging and diversesoundtrack of its successful feature under yet another newly formed subsidiary,Suave.

If Amores perros’s press brook called attention to the joint goal of quality andbox office, Mama’s stresses the artistic independence of its director from a very

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visible producer (Omnilife’s website features lengthy clips of Vergara addressingemployees at huge junkets). We are told that ‘Jorge has always guaranteedAlfonso complete freedom as a director, the best production quality possible andfreedom from interference or censorship’. Yet the handsome version of the scriptpublished in Mexico tells another story (Cuaron and Cuaron). Vergara’s unmis-takeable frame is visible in a large number of location shots, both in Mexico Cityat the start of the filming and on the fabled beach at its end (the film was shotin sequence). His name is also featured first in the credits. Moreover Vergaraeven got to play a minor part. Seen only from behind, he impersonates at anearly wedding scene the Mexican president whose identity was not yet known,because of elections imminent at the time of shooting.

Whether Cuaron implied any irony in this piece of casting is unclear. Ver-gara’s global ambitions are evident from Omnilife’s website; and excerpts fromits radio programming reveal such unsavoury sides to his business as therepeated denial of the existence of HIV and the claim that Omnilife’s high-techherbal concoctions are a cure for AIDS. Whatever the case, there could be noclearer sign of the change of funding paradigm from public to private than theimpersonation of the head of state by a pseudo-presidential chief executiveofficer. Moreover, Anhelo, like Altavista once more, has made its move into themagic triangle of Ibermedian production space. Cuaron and Vergara set up anew branch in New York under the name El Delirio. Cuaron explained: ‘Estacompanıa tiene dos brazos: uno es America Latina y Espana para producirpelıculas habladas en espanol; y otro es Los Angeles para producir pelıculasinternacionales no habladas en espanol [The company has two arms: one inLatin America and Spain for producing films in Spanish, and the other in LosAngeles for producing international films not made in Spanish’] (Delirio). It is aconnection long desired, but unachieved, by state institutions keen to regulateco-production and thus create a common audiovisual market.

One future project is said to be a feature starring Spanish actress AitanaSanchez Gijon. We have seen that the nationality of the featured cast was at oncerequired by state regulatory regimes and decried by domestic audiences, waryof ‘inauthentic’ tortilla soups. Why, then, did both Amores perros and Y tu mamacontinue to cast Spanish actresses as their female protagonists? One hundred percent privately funded, they were free of government control; and directedprimarily to domestic audiences in Mexico, they did not overtly court theSpanish public.

Let us examine a little more closely Goya Toledo’s supermodel Valeria in thefirst film and Maribel Verdu’s fugitive wife Luisa in the second. It is noteworthythat no attention is called within Amores perros to the nationality of Valeria.Described as ‘the Latin American representative’ of perfume Enchant, she isclearly all too at home in the glamorous world of adulterous magazine editorDaniel and publicity-seeking actor Andres. While Goya Toledo makes no at-tempt to disguise her Peninsular accent and idiolect, there is only one pointwhen her origin is remarked on: taken to hospital after the car crash, she begsDaniel not to get in touch with her father back in Spain, declaring that he iscapable of saying she deserved this misfortune.

Significantly, perhaps, the role of Valeria was the one most changed in theshooting and editing process. Gonzalez Inarritu consistently cuts planned se-quences still in the final version of the script that would have directed more

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audience sympathy to this vain and superficial character. Thus we do not learnthat Valeria has previously suffered an abortion of Daniel’s child and we are notprivy to scenes of domestic intimacy between the lovers (Daniel tenderlytending to the injured Valeria on the toilet) or charting the gradual disinte-gration of their relationship (a first argument after Valeria dismisses the maidbrought in by Daniel to care for her). It is telling that Valeria is not providedwith a back story in the way that the other Mexican protagonists are: thepersonal histories of Gael Garcıa’s Octavio, Emilio Echevarrıa’s El Chivo, andindeed Alvaro Guerrero’s Daniel are clearly laid out for the spectator, thusfacilitating empathy and directing sympathy.

Maribel Verdu’s Luisa is rather similar. Here the ‘Spanishness’ of the characteris more accentuated, since in dialogue sometimes suggested by the actressherself the Mexican boys are required to explain their ostentatiously localchilango dialect. And while we are at times given privileged access to Luisa’semotional state (the audience, but not the boys, watches her tearful telephonebreak-up with her Mexican husband), much of her back story is again denied us,while the boys are fully established in their social and psychological context. Afully detailed biography of the character is only accessible to those who buy thelavish script published in Mexico (reproduced as a blurry booklet with the UKDVD). And while viewers may guess that Luisa is sick, it is only after herdisappearance from the narrative that her terminal cancer is revealed. Theexcellent website pays almost no attention to the character, encouraging surfersto dress the twin charolastras in their grungy garments or tour their batteredstation wagon (Y tu mama.). As in Amores perros, then, there is a certaindisengagement from or distancing of the Spanish character, one mitigated onlyby the subtlety of both performances. Moreover while the presence of Verdu,popular veteran of some 30 Spanish films, may have helped the marketing ofMama in her native country, the relatively unknown Toledo would have givenno such advantage to Amores perros.

What I would argue, then, is that this anomalous casting plays a similar roleto the transatlantic or ‘triangular’ ambitions of the films’ twin productioncompanies. The often ridiculed attempts at co-production made by governmentagencies are here rewritten in a local context, with transnational traffic at onceacknowledged and disavowed by the presence of foreign actresses who are bothspectacularly visible on screen and covertly undercut in the narrative. The fetishof Europeanness thus stands in for a globalization of the audiovisual industrieswhich cannot be directly represented in films whose claim to authenticity isbased on national specificity: both features were shot entirely on location andmake much of their ‘natural’ settings. The dangerous liaisons depicted in Amoresperros and Mama might then be read symptomatically as replaying the missedencounters of two cinematic suitors in the production arena: Mexico, the darlingof Latin America, and Spain, the painted lady.

How, then, do we theorize this conundrum? Clearly what we have witnessedis a shift, partial and incomplete, from a vestigial paradigm of protection–pres-ervation (in which cinema embodies an endangered national identity andheritage) to an emergent promotion–innovation paradigm (in which art andcommerce are no longer held to be antagonistic in the elaboration of a newnational style). Ironically this second model, more friendly to US-style pro-duction practices (the star system, professional promotion and producer involve-

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Transatlantic Traffic in Mexican Films 399

ment in the development process), can lead not to homogenization but to areinforcement of territorial markers such as land and language. As Daniel Matohas recently argued of telenovela production based in Miami, ‘transnationaliza-tion and the globalization of consumption … do not imply the deterritorializa-tion of either’ (2003, p. 196). My own microanalysis of production processesaims, like that of Mato, to disprove the ‘fallacy’ of homogenization by revealingthat ‘what we call globalization is in fact the result of numerous different socialprocesses which arise specifically from the actions of particular social protago-nists; numerous and diverse but nonetheless identifiable and thus open toinvestigation’ (p. 196). The complex interplay of such diverse agents as the EUand Intermedia, IMCINE and Anhelo, reveals that the generally accepted ten-dency to cultural homogenization is by no means self-evident.

Of course the two paradigms I have described overlap. The protectionistmodel can produce innovative filmmaking; the innovative model (as I haveshown elsewhere in the case of Amores perros and Mama [Amores perros, Heaven’sMouth]) owes more than it cares to acknowledge to the filmic fathers it has sovehemently disavowed. Thus most recently the patriarch of Mexican cinemaRipstein has turned to the new medium digital video, while free-marketeer Foxhas announced a public programme to increase feature production to 50 a year.In Spain, meanwhile, plans to cut state funding drastically led insiders topredict, as on previous such occasions, the death of their industry (Academia).However, with even EU regulation turning in favour of industrial track recordsas a precondition for funding, the tide is running in the same direction on bothsides of the Atlantic.

Perhaps Bourdieu’s field theory is the best way of conceptualizing thissituation. As the sum total of all operations in any given area, the field is madeup of the intersection of texts, producers and institutions. Moreover the fieldflexibly regulates social and cultural change by aligning people and things in anapparently natural order:

The specific regularities that constitute the economy of the field [are]immediately filled with sense and rationality for every individ-ual … hence the effect of communal validation which is the basis ofcollective belief in the game and its fetishes. (1990, p. 66)

The field intersects with ‘habitus’. According to Bourdieu, habitus serves toguarantee the constancy of practices better than ‘formal rules or explicit norms’.It thus follows that in a new funding environment, new forms of filmmakingwill arise with apparent spontaneity. Altavista and Anhelo see no contradictionbetween artistic freedom and commercial constraints. This is because the direc-tors with whom the companies collaborate seek the freedom to make films thathave good commercial prospects; or, to put it another way, the producers offerfunding for films that exhibit the signs of artistic freedom. This is not to denythat the resulting films can be genuinely innovative and hugely enjoyable. It israther to suggest that that innovation remains necessarily enclosed within themagic circle of habitus.

At moments of crisis the field will fracture and be reconfigured. Here is thechance for what Bourdieu calls the ‘allodoxia’: ‘an alternative system of taken forgranted assumptions running counter to the implicit consensus’ (1979, p. 156).While their continuing controversies with the Academy over the Ariels and

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rating system remain symptomatic of this tension between paradigms, it seemslikely that the licensed heretics Gonzalez Inarritu, Cuaron and their friend andcolleague Guillermo del Toro will become the new orthodoxy. This new align-ment of aesthetics and economics is what lies behind a letter to The Economist,which claims that ‘after a decade of privatization the Mexican case shows thatmarkets have better taste than bureaucracies’ (26 October—1 November 2002). Itseems more likely that the Mexican renaissance, as remarkable as it is fragile, isa prime example of the interaction between state, industry and identity that hasbeen so ably documented by Castells elsewhere.

References

PrintAmores perros. Cannes: Altavista, 2000 [press kit].Pierre Bourdieu, The Inheritors (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1979).Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity, 1990).Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).Carlos Cuaron and Alfonso Cuaron, Y tu mama tambien: guion y argumento (Guadalajara, no date).European Audiovisual Observatory, Focus 2000: World Film Market Trends (Cannes: European

Audiovisual Observatory, 2000).Daniel Mato, ‘Transnationalization of Telenovela Production’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 12

(2003).Paul Julian Smith, Amores Perros: Modern Classic (London: BFI, 2003).Specialist periodicalsThe Economist (London)Screen International (London)Variety (Los Angeles)Internet (all accessed 17 October 2002)Altavista: www.cie-mexico.com.mx/espanol/cie340/i/altavista.htmIbermedia: www.oei.es/ibermedia.htmCIE: www.cie-mexico.com.mx/espanol/cie3100.htmCine por la red: www.porlared.com/cinered/noticiasn act02022702.htmlCouncil of Europe: www.jurisint.org/pub/01/en/doc/218 2.htmDelirio: www.estacioncentral.com/cine/cinemexicano/mexican.htmEstudio Mexico Prisa: www.estacioncentral.com/cine/cinemexicano/mexican.htmEuropean Film Forum: www.forum-eurocine.com/2000 gb.pdfFox: http://imcine.gob.mex/dream/html/reglamento ley fed.htmlHijo de la novia: http://tentaciones.elpais.es/t/d/20011116/temaport/tp0.htmMIDIA: http://pymes.tsai.es/midia/mercado.htmlOmnilife: http://200.34.37.225/home/productos/introduccion.htmSalinas http://imcine.gob.mex/dream/html/reglamento ley federal.htmlHeaven’s Mouth www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/2002 04/heaven.htmlAcuerdo de coproduccion: www.cinespain.com/ICAA/legisl/conven/mexico1.htmlToda la ley: www.todalaley.com/mostrarLey434p1tn.htmNoticias: http://noticias.juridicas.com/base datos/Admin/rd526–2002.htmlY tu mama.tambien: YTuMamaTambien.com

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