Open Your Eyes

Abre los ojos (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997)

Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001)

My first Spanish film: Jamón, jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992)

Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, and Jordi Mollá on set in 1991

   I wanted to write something to mark the first anniversary of the blog. I was in half a mind to write about the film that this blog takes its name from (Mateo Gil's Nadie conoce a nadie), but on balance decided that writing about the first Spanish film I ever watched was a better fit to the occasion. By happy coincidence, Jamón, jamón also celebrates a significant anniversary this year: it was released twenty years ago in Spain (in September 1992).

Spain Made Flesh: Penélope Cruz and La niña de tus ojos (Fernando Trueba, 1998)

      The stardom of Penélope Cruz can be dated precisely as beginning in 1992 with the release of Jamón jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992) and Belle epoque (Fernando Trueba, 1992). The two films side by side encapsulate two facets of her star image; on the one hand, Cruz’s position as what Eugenia de la Torriente describes as the ‘mito erótico nacional’ [‘national erotic myth’] (2004: 38) as Silvia in Jamón jamón, and on the other, the virginal ideal in the character of Luz in Belle epoque. But they also caused her to debut on the national stage in two films that either consciously questioned and parodied Spanish identities or conflated contemporary Spain with Spain’s past; Cruz’s emergence at a time when Spanish identity was openly being discussed and Spain was actively (and publicly) trying to redefine itself has shaped the form and content of her stardom, the ways in which she interacts with the national, and the image of Spanishness that she represents as an end result. From the outset of her career, Penélope Cruz has also been constructed as a star who specifically ‘belongs’ to Spain: a number of Spanish female stars have emerged in the last twenty years but none are so possessively claimed as she. Cruz is commonly referred to in the Spanish press as ‘nuestra Penélope’ [‘our Penélope’] and her star image is presented as signifying innate aspects of Spanish womanhood, and she is seen as embodying Spain, or ‘España hecha carne’ [‘Spain made flesh’] in the words of director Bigas Luna (Trashorras 1999: 132).
      Peter Evans notes how many daughters she has played onscreen and describes her as ‘la “niña”, es decir, la de todos los espectadores, la de toda España, a la que se refieren a menudo como “nuestra Penélope”’ [‘the little girl, that is to say, that of all the spectators, that of all of Spain, she who they refer to at least as “our Penélope”’] (2004: 54-55). This is further emphasised by the roles that are located within a specifically Spanish context: the arrival of the Second Republic in Belle epoque; incarcerated as a ‘political subversive’ during the last years of the dictatorship in Entre rojas (Azucena Rodríguez, 1995); a ‘gran estrella’ recalling Imperio Argentina in La niña de tus ojos / The Girl of Your Dreams (Fernando Trueba, 1998); Goya’s model for ‘La maja vestida’ and ‘La maja desnuda’ in Volavérunt (Bigas Luna, 1999); as well as her short role in the prologue (set during the ‘state of exception’ in 1970) of Carne trémula / Live Flesh (Pedro Almodóvar, 1997). These films position Cruz and her star image within narratives that have cultural and historical significance to Spain and therefore embed her within the cultural imaginary: ‘a nation is nothing without the stories it tells itself about itself’ (Triana-Toribio 2003: 6). This post examines the representation of Penélope Cruz as embodying Spain, specifically in the film La niña de tus ojos, the film for which she won her first Goya for Best Actress in 1999.

Pedro and Penélope

    Penélope Cruz has appeared in four Almodóvar films to date (Live Flesh (1997), All About My Mother (1999), Volver (2006), and Broken Embraces (2009)). I was going to simply write about Volver for the blog, it is among my favourite films, but in my mind the film is inextricably linked to Cruz and her star image (in part, no doubt, because that was the prism through which I initially viewed it –see note at the end of this post). Almodóvar has over the years worked with a succession of female muses: Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, and most recently Penélope Cruz. He adeptly both plays to their strengths and also pushes them beyond what they have delivered for other directors –labelling him a ‘women’s director’ is often meant to be derogatory, but Almodóvar directs women like few others. While his muses have played iconic roles for other directors, I would argue that the roles given to them by Almodóvar are among their most memorable, and (in terms of UK audiences) often their best known as well. It is a well-circulated story in her interviews that after sneaking into a screening of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), a young Penélope Cruz told her mother that she was going to be an actress and would someday work with Almodóvar. This post looks at how her career has intersected with his, and why Volver can be seen as a ‘star vehicle’ custom-made for her.