Transnational Reciprocity: Liminal Love in Fernando León de Aranoa\'s Princesas

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Transnational Reciprocity: Liminal Love in Fernando León de Aranoa's Princesas Maria Van Liew

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University of Pennsylvania, Languages and Cultures Department Published online: 13 Aug 2012.

To cite this article: Maria Van Liew (2012) Transnational Reciprocity: Liminal Love in Fernando León de Aranoa's Princesas , Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 29:5, 450-457, DOI: 10.1080/10509201003719324 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10509201003719324

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Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 29: 450–457, 2012 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1050-9208 print / 1543-5326 online DOI: 10.1080/10509201003719324

Transnational Reciprocity: Liminal Love in Fernando Le´on de Aranoa’s Princesas

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MARIA VAN LIEW

Since the 1990s, Spanish directors have been expanding their representational efforts by offering diverse perspectives on the issue of racial and ethnic differences posed by the rapid increase in immigration during the late 1980s and early 1990s. While Montxo Armend´ariz’s Letters From Alou (1990) spearheaded the contemporary Spanish immigration film genre with the tale of a Senegalese immigrant to Spain, it was not until the latter 1990s that directors began exploring the relationship between Spain and women immigrants, predominantly from Latin America, whose numbers rose dramatically coincident with the appearance of these narratives. From a sociological viewpoint, Angeles Escriv´a insists that “while migrant men—especially of African origin—were visible within the Spanish landscape, women have remained invisible to the public and in the eyes of some social scientists dealing with migration issues” (199). The representational field has shifted to include the “intrusion” of women immigrant protagonists, an expansion that allows us more opportunities to participate in critical practices commensurate with shifting identities heightened by the effects of globalization (Martin-Marquez, 269). However, it may be prudent to heed Simon Gikandi’s suggestion here that “there is no reason to suppose that the global flow in images has a homological connection to transformations in social and cultural relationships” (632), and to consider the level of (hopeful) fantasy involved in assessing the nonetheless socially and politically accurate circumstances and characterizations depicted in a film like Fernando Le´on de Aranoa’s Princesas (2005), the most alluring aspect of which is the language of reciprocity developing between Spanish nationals and “illegal” immigrants. The mutual envy and admiration in a spirit of rivalry among the women protagonists spurs a series of conflicts, crises and celebratory moments stemming from a burgeoning solidarity that transcends global issues of uneven development. Many immigration films deal with the paranoia surrounding a sense of loss of national identity fueling anti-immigrant sentiment,1 while the incorporation of “the Latin American friend” as confidant and counterpart alegre has lead to a more positive protagonism in films such as Manuel Guti´errez Arag´on’s Cosas que dej´e en la Habana (1997), Iciar Bolla´ın’s Flores de otro mundo (1999), Helena Taberna’s documentary Extranjeras (2003) and Princesas.2 These narratives work diligently to capture the more intimate forms of expression Caribbean women immigrants offer in dialogue with their Spanish counterparts. Pilar Rodr´ıguez explains the importance of attracting spectatorial identification through multiple processes of reflection and identification in attempting to “document” this Maria Van Liew is an Associate Professor of Spanish culture, film and language at West Chester University of Pennsylvania in the Languages and Cultures Department. Her recent teaching and research consider the intersection of gender, migration and film in Spain and Latin America.

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developing relationship: “Ello contribuye a reforzar la idea de que la inmigraci´on es un asunto indisociablemente bilateral, dual, rec´ıproco, que afecta a quien llega, pero tambi´en a quien acoge una vez que ambos entran en contacto en la medida que sea (This contributes to reinforcing the idea that immigration is an indisputable bilateral, dual, reciprocal issue affecting anyone who arrives, but also, anyone affected once both come into contact however that may be)” (10). Helena Taberna affirms that “la diferencia entre la primera generaci´on que llega a Espa˜na y la siguiente que ya es hija de los inmigrantes es muy grande y resulta curioso escuchar a gente con un acento madrile˜no pero con rasgos extranjeros (the difference between the first generation arriving to Spain and the next who is now daughter of immigrants is vast, and it is wildly strange to hear people with a Madrid accent but foreign features).” Beyond colorful accents, however, is how the issue of race and notions of exoticism greatly impact the incorporation of Caribbean bodies in a Spanish social landscape. As a self-proclaimed “European conscript,” Stuart Hall explains that European identity, though premised on an imagined “sameness,” is constructed through difference, thereby affirming the importance of what is, in fact, outside: “So nations - and supra-national communities—if they are to hang together, and construct a sense of belongingness amongst their members—cannot simply be political, economic or geographical entities; they also depend on how they are represented and imagined: they exist within, not outside, representation, the imaginary” (2002, 61). This “imaginary” from a cinematic standpoint includes the non-European in the majority of its contemporary narratives, perhaps in the attempt to sculpt the autochthonous from that which is formerly deemed “foreign” in colonial and post-colonial context. It is precisely these shifting boundaries due to current re-zoning of European borders that constitute a recognizable norm that marks a generic fabric of cinematic representation as equally mutative in its inclusion of “non-European” protagonists who in part, represent the arrival of “Third World” bodies to “First World” loci. But how to include these “disruptions” in the already unstable process of marking lines of difference? Hall explains that “[t]he lowering of barriers within Europe, the coming together around the “lingua franca” of a common market in goods, capital and ideas, the incorporation of a “wider Europe” which the modern “myth” of the Euro is supposed to symbolize, each continues to display its reverse side. What is “open” within is increasingly barred without” (Hall, 2002; 67, my emphasis). In Princesas, the arrival of Caribbean protagonism shakes things up from the inside, and forces “Spain” to re-imagine these encounters as “native” and “natural,” thereby attaching the liminal qualities of immigration drama to practices of national identification as inclusive and modern. The fact that the main character, Zulema, from the Dominican Republic does not stay is painful for “Spain” as demonstrated through the eyes and heart of her Spanish counterpart, Cayetana. Along these lines of transnational encounters, difference results in the reciprocity of desire for a better life, be that in the “Third World” or the “First World.” What interests us here in a film like Princesas is the place and time of encounter that results in a space of reciprocity that we shall examine as the shared transnational subjectivity of women protagonists in global context. The disruptive potential of the arrival of undocumented women is framed as a potential threat to the “stability” of local demand for a group of Spanish prostitutes in Princesas. A Spanish woman’s point of view is represented collectively from within the confines of a hair salon, whose large front window looks upon a plaza ablaze with “flowers from another world,” a conglomerate comprised of numerous undocumented prostitutes of Latin American, Asian, Eastern European and African origins.3 Rather than focusing on the male

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gaze, Aranoa offers a fearsome female gaze obsessed with these “exotic flowers.” From within the salon one woman complains, “Trabajo la mitad desde que esta gente lleg´o al vecindario (I’m working half as much since these people came to the neighborhood)” to which the film’s protagonist Cayetana responds, “pobrecitas, tienen que ganar la vida de alguna manera. Quiza no hay trabajo en sus pa´ıses (Poor things, they have to earn a living somehow. Maybe there’s no work in their countries),” which garners the cynical response: “¿Qu´e, la gente no folla en sus pa´ıses? (What, don’t people fuck in their countries?).” Unlike her colleagues, the film’s protagonist suffers from a certain fascination with the Latin Americans and dreams of saving enough money to “ponerse un par de tetas como ellas (get a pair of tits like them),” noting that one of her friends is working a lot more since she had a similar operation. Yet, she frequently notes the potential “peligro de auto-rechazo (threat of self-rejection)” when tampering with the body, which foreshadows the ending of the film. The salon conversation continues as black women are visible from the shop window and the cynic states that “[ellas] son las peores. Desde que llegaron, esto es una selva (they are the worst. Since they arrived, it’s like a jungle),” referring, she says, to the lower prices they have to charge now. “No es un problema de racismo, sino de econom´ıa (It’s not an issue of racism, but rather of economics).” The conversation devolves into a dissection of the foreign women: culos/asses, ways of walking, smells and hairdos. This shift to the female gaze is significant, because it demonstrates the Spanish woman’s sense of displacement as sexual object within the dimension of Spanish social and economic interaction. It also reveals the uselessness of a transnational feminist theory that would act as if women’s oppressions and empowerment are universal; that women do not experience and actively engage in power plays that are in part structured by intersections of nationality and race.4 After a confrontation with “the competition” over a client, Cayetana finds that Zulema, her Dominican counterpart, has left her half of the sum earned as a gesture of solidarity and fairness, thereby setting in motion a friendship premised on the moment these women “turn around” and truly see each other.5 After a brutal attack by an abusive client who dangles the possibility of achieving los papeles to keep Zulema under his thumb, Cayetana finds her, helps her by bringing her to the hospital, and a spirit of intimacy and trust ensues. This act of seeing the other is not the occupation of a male objectifying gaze, but the development of the ability to see the other as desirable and equal through the prism of difference. The notion of “sameness” or homogeneity is disrupted almost immediately by the direct communication that sparks between Cayetana and Zulema. Initially seeing each other as “the same” (i.e. competing), their differences quickly surface as they invite each other into the other’s life, dreams, disappointments, thereby highlighting international inequalities and global hierarchies of power that disfavor them in different ways. Unlike the “disruptive difference” that the arrival of a dark-skinned Cuban “import” named Milady in Ic´ıar Bolla´ın’s Flowers From Another World (1999) represents to the isolated rural milieu of the film, the more claustrophobic depictions of the streets in Princesas insinuate that Zulema is just one of hundreds of thousands of women flocking to Spain’s urban loci. Isabel Santaolalla ventures that the Caribbean woman now occupies a role in cinema (and beyond the screen) once granted “the Nordic woman” in the 1950s and 1960s in Spain when northern European tourism began arriving en masse to Spanish shores. She suggests that Spain, as a “First World” player now can no longer perpetuate northern European women as icons of “difference,” “otherness” and “exoticism.” She states that “. . .se puede aventurar que, incluso hoy en d´ıa, para el hombre espa˜nol resulta m´as tranquilizador el dirigir su mirada libidinosa hacia fuera, hacia la mujer extranjera, evitando as´ı la

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objectivicaci´on de la espa˜nola, que, despu´es de todo, es la madre, la esposa o la hija que se ha de respetar (One could venture that, even today, it is more comfortable for the Spanish man to direct his libidinous gaze outside, towards the foreign woman, avoiding in this way objectifying the Spanish woman who, after all, is mother, wife, or daughter deserving of respect)” (180). What Santaolalla’s commentary emphasizes is that “foreign” can no longer be European, but rather a non-European “other.” However, the male (cinematic and sociological) gaze is not emphasized in Princesas, though it is included to frame women’s solidarity and intimacy as a private domain within an established system of sexual oppression. Women’s liberation in Spain also includes a sense of entitlement in objectifying both Spanish and “foreign” men as sexual objects or, in this case, as customers. But it is the female gaze that emphasizes communication across lines of difference in the forms of fear, envy, admiration, need and, ultimately, love. It is precisely this disturbing sense of integration of “the other” into the Spanish social and economic fabric depicted in a social realist film like Princesas that enhances the sense of reciprocity necessary in depicting transnational subjectivity. In the twenty-first century especially, “the Latin American friend” has been offered many roles in Spanish film narratives. The notion of friendship as secondary to individual protagonism is turned on its head by a story of friendship that produces a reciprocal protagonism through trust, curiosity and direct communication. What ensues despite numerous scenes of Zulema’s and Cayetana’s victimization by male predatory customers is the revelation that women speak to each other across lines of differentiation as a means of understanding themselves. Candela Pe˜na who plays Cayetana states that “de todos los personajes que he inhabitado, e´ ste se me engancha m´as por lo que dice y por lo que piensa (out of all the characters I’ve played, this one sticks to me the most due to what she says and what she thinks).” Along the same lines of admiration Aranoa explains: “No me interesa la chica, la prostituta que habla con el coche, sino cuando se da la vuelta a hablar con una amiga. El di´alogo va a ser muy distinta (I’m not interested in the girl, the prostitute who speaks to a car, but more so in when she turns around to speak to a friend. The dialogue is going to be very different)” (DVD: directorial commentary). Initially, Cayetana is obsessed by Zulema’s appearance, her clothes (particularly a “SexyGirl 69” baseball shirt that she covets and eventually borrows for a “date”), her breasts, and her hair. But Zulema quickly introduces her to multi-ethnic quarters of Madrid and teaches her “sexy” phrases such as “ll´enamelo de leche (fill me up with cream)” that has the two young women cracking up when the waiter comes by and asks if they would like any milk for their coffee (!) They speak of black and white male bodies (customers) when Cayetana brings up the issue of condoms and asks Zulema, since she doesn’t use them, if she gets tested. Her silence foreshadows the ending diagnosis that her body has, in fact, been infected by a practice that in the short term satisfies her customers but which has put her at death’s door. Cayetana, as a Spanish national with little to worry about other than saving money for her “breast enhancement,” contrasted by Zulema’s need to share a tiny apartment with strangers on a rotating basis (these same immigrants kick her out when they find out she is a prostitute). Cayetana’s tone throughout the film is one of nostalgia for experiences, a life she has not had: “En si no est´a mal; no me ha pasado nada (things aren’t so bad; nothing has really happened yet).” She gets particularly excited about a man who doesn’t understand that she’s a prostitute and who she “dates” on a regular basis. Despite Cayetana’s direct, honest style, “Manuel” does not hear what she’s saying when she comments on his long discourse about computers and his business:

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M: You’re really passionate about your work C: Very. M: Great, that’s what counts. Whatever you do, do it with passion! (Cayetana’s expression is one of dispassion and sadness, which Manuel cannot “hear.”) On another date, Cayetana is assaulted in the women’s bathroom by a former customer who recognizes her in the bar and who forces her to “take care of him” by offering an exorbitant amount of money after which she returns to the table with Manuel, shattered but silent. Zulema’s interaction with an abusive client is one of brutal, violent episodes that she withstands with the hope of achieving papeles from him. The desperation of her situation compared to the nostalgic, apathetic tone of Cayetana’s underscores “First World” malaise when confronted with life’s “problems.” Caye’s passivity compared with Zulema’s proactive stance on earning a living in Madrid and sending money home to the Dominican Republic forces the spectator to look at the two women as parts of a whole that fit in a global system that supports both reactions to a similar situation: desperation and apathy. This film depicts two protagonists who “choose” to live on the social margins as a means to saving money for their ultimate goals of happiness—a euphemism for overcoming their respective situations of solitude and marginality. Inadvertently, it is the solidarity of mutual fascination and respect that leads them to new choices. During a night out dancing Zulema asks if her friend is going to “charge her [catch]” to which Cayetana responds: “Hoy no somos putas, somos princesas! (tonight we’re not whores, we’re princesses!).” Cayetana, despite her geo-economical central location and legal status as a member of the European Union, seems to suffer from a depressive inertia, while Zulema is driven to send money home to her mother and young son despite her inability to legalize her status and earn an “honest” living. In many ways, the film could have been titled, “When She Turns Around,” because it is an exploration of friendship between a Dominican “irregular” and a Spanish national, whose families know nothing about their professional activities. Their sense of invisibility in this regard does not impede them from seeing and adopting characteristics of the other, most notably Cayetana, who has her hair braided in an “exotic” fashion and happily reports that she’s getting more work as a result. Ultimately, despite initial rejection, the members of the salon integrate Zulema into the collaborative where we see her braiding other women’s hair, as well. Ironically, she never braids her own long, dark hair, but wears it elegantly long and loose. It is precisely this friendship of collaboration that is continuously disrupted by prejudice, hardship, abuse, violence, the two women’s dreamy approach to reality and, ultimately, the HIV that Zulema harbors. The end of the film discloses many “truths,” including this medical diagnosis and Zulema’s desire to return home. Cayetana insists, “Es normal, es tu reino. Las princesas son tan sensibles que se mueren de nostalgia [i.e. HIV]; no pueden vivir tan lejos de su reino (It’s normal, it’s your kingdom. Princesses are so sensitive that they can die of nostalgia; they can’t live so far from their kingdoms).” In a sense, the same body Zulema sells as exotic commodity rejects the cycle (auto-rechazo) and insists that she go home, inspiring Cayetana, eventually, to do the same. The realization that they have to separate despite their solidarity wakes the two women up to their individual realities. In a touching scene in which Cayetana gives Zulema the hundreds of Euros she managed to save for “her operation,” she states in her typically dreamy way that Zulema has left an indelible imprint on her (on Spain): “Las cosas no son importantes porque existen, sino porque pensamos en ellas. Como tu hijo. No est´a pero piensas en e´ l. Por eso existe. Mi madre siempre dec´ıa que existimos porque se piensa en

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nosotros (Things aren’t important because they exist, but because we think about them. Like your son. He’s not here, but you think of him. That’s why he exists. My mother always said that we exist because others think of us).” Cayetana seems relieved to have made this connection with “the other,” whose affection and vulnerability releases her from the “reality” of what she believes is her path—to improve her body and desirability based on other’s dimensions, in favor of what she knows, that Zulema (love and solidarity) exists. Earlier in the film, Cayetana laments, “Lo peor no ser´ıa que no hay nada despu´es de la muerte, pero que hay otra vida despu´es de e´ sta, y que fuera como e´ sta (The worst thing wouldn’t be to find out that there’s nothing after death, but that there is another life like this one).” The addendum to Zulema’s departure is one of a transformed Cayetana who, finally having recognized “the other” within Europe and within herself, offers the spectator a chance to entertain transnational subjectivity as a shared responsibility in overcoming our worst enemies—inertia and apathy, most notably when surrounded by possibility and privilege. Strangely, there is a sense of free will in Zulema’s departure, underscored by her friend’s bragging to airport guards that: “mi amiga acaba de salir, pero no porque Ustedes la forzaron, sino porque quiere estar con su familia. Porque quiere. Esto es todo (my friend has just left, but not because you forced her to, but because she wants to be with her family. Because she wants to. That’s all).” The final, touching scene takes place at the dinner table, where Cayetana visits with her widowed equally dreamy mother, brother and sister-in-law, her pink cell phone by her side. After her mother expresses fascination with the phone, she asks after her daughter’s friend whom she had met earlier in the film. Cayetana blurts out as if speaking for herself in the third person: “Se ha ido. No podia m´as. Era puta. Por eso, se ha ido (She left. She couldn’t take it anymore. She was a whore. That’s why she left).” Leaving her family stunned and her phone on the table, Cayetana states that she’s done, that she doesn’t want any more (apparently referring to her meal) and brings the plate into the kitchen. At this moment her phone rings and she asks her mother to answer it, “coge t´u, mama,” perhaps handing over part of the responsibility of avoiding an imperfect “First World” reality. While I have offered only a brief reading of this particular film, my intention is to begin an exploration of “the other” as friend rather than mere object/subject of desire or rejection. I would contend that it is Cayetana and Zulema’s relationship that which represents the transnational, more so than Zulema’s illegal presence as an individual. This aesthetic of liminality is enhanced even further by the film’s structure, which highlights the space and place of globalization as a shared experience of evolving neighborhoods, hairdos, even customers. It is my hope that no reified notion of a “transnational subject” should take hold, for this may simply perpetuate and/or create racial, gender and sexual stereotypes serving to fuel the uneven mechanisms of globalization. In the creative hands of some artists, these mechanisms are put to work in the critical representation of the shifting processes of the shared experience of practicing and exploring transnational subjectivity in European context. What should happen in the near future is the expansion of this transgeneric mode of storytelling in the hands of non-native Spanish direction that will tell yet “other” stories that continue to question established notions of the privilege of “First World” national identity, and that will perhaps move on from the expected conflicts arising from the rapid and recent influx of people from “Third World” cultures in search of “a better life” (meaning, the life of a First Worlder). In the meantime, existing stories of immigration in Spain exhibit an introspective mode that allows “the ‘other’ within” to emerge—creating space for the shared responsibility of transnational subjectivity that encompasses the time and place of these cultural encounters.

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Simon Gikandi points out that transgressive theories of globalization reject the identity of the nation as “the particular time and place and practice” that generates cultures as too Eurocentric in its sense of time (development) to be accurate for speaking of transnational diasporas (635). But, Princesas aligns itself with the insistence of the predominance of Eurocentric time as a material reality in the uneven development of national economies and the material realities of individuals beholden to their nationality: “It is in this sense that the nation becomes both the form that structures modern identities and the sign of their displacement and alienation (635).” Confirming this assertion is the representation of dislocation by migration as a shared phenomenon in global context, as the requirement of relocation for women immigrants to “First World” realms. What is encouraging about narratives like Princesas is that the “fantasy” of communication and mutual support is presented as a possibility despite the ironic separation of “friends” due to global forces that urge these protagonists to make choices they could not have imagined had they never interacted. Their differences become enlightening rather than disruptive to their relationship. The notion of difference allows Cayetana to see Zulema as a woman, as an equal, and as someone she loves. Their ultimate separation due to Zulema’s decision to return home (with the help of funds that would have been spent on a frivolous operation premised on patriarchal notions of desirability) prompts Cayetana to abandon her malaise and to enlist her mother, also living in a fantasy land of “First World” privilege and loneliness, to answer her phone: “Mom, answer it.” Abandoning herself to the truth (of a client on the other end of the line), Cayetana is, in a sense, experiencing a physical “auto-rechazo” and therefore going home, too.

Notes 1. Many cinematic representations include the “threat” of non-Hispanic immigration in the form of linguistic, racial, and religious challenges to the status quo, as well as feeding national anxieties regarding difference (Flesler 2004; Rodr´ıguez Garc´ıa 2006; Gavil´an and Di Salvo 2006). “Even though a number of these films strive to show positive images of immigrants, they also reveal, through failed romance plots, a profound anxiety about racial/cultural contagion and miscegenation” (Flesler 104). 2. See Santaolalla, Chapter IV: “El hispanoamericano: El “otro” Familiar,” (169–226, 2005) for an in depth analysis of postcolonial “inheritance” and the representational presence of Spaniards and Hispanics in each others’ lives under Franco into contemporary conditions. 3. This is an interesting twist from the Caribbean gaze emphasized from within the “Love Bus” in Flowers From Another World, which highlights the touristic flavor of the women’s arrival by invitation to the Castilian town of Santa Eulalia, at which they are permitted to gawk and stare from the framework and “safety” of the bus windows. 4. I would like to thank my colleague Lisa Huebner for this insightful comment. Our collaboration for the panel “Transnational Gossip” has proven to be a fruitful interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and insights. 5. Again, there is a notable corollary here with an important scene in Flowers. . . during which the Dominican protagonist “buries” her differences with her reticent mother-in-law in the cemetery. After many disputes and arguments, it is here where Gregoria, the mother, “sees” Patricia for the first time as a woman rather than

Works Cited Ballesteros, Isolina. “Embracing the Other: The Feminization of Spanish ‘Immigration Cinema’,” Studies in Hispanic Cinemas 2.1 (2005): 3–14.

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Escriv´a, Angeles. “The Position and Status of Migrant Women in Spain.” Gender and Migration in Southern Europe: Women on the Move. Floya Anthias and Gabriella Lazaridis, eds. Oxford, UK: Berg, 2000: 199–225. Flesler, Daniela. “New Racism, Intercultural Romance, and the Immigration Question in Contemporary Spanish Cinema,” Studies in Hispanic Cinemas 1.2 (2004): 103–118. Gikandi, Simon. “Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality.” Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism. Gaurav Desai and Supriya Nair, eds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2005: 608–634. Hall, Stuart. “In But Not of Europe: Europe at its Myths,” Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture 22 (Winter 2002–2003): 59–71. Navajas, Gonzalo. “Transnational Aesthetics: Literature and Film Between Borders,” Ciberletras 14 (2006). . Accessed January 15, 2010. Santaolalla, Isabel. Los “Otros.” Etnicidad y “raza” en el cine espa˜nol conempor´aneo. Zaragoza, Spain: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2005. Taberna, Helena. “Todos llevamos un peque˜no Hitler dentro que hay que domesticar” Diario de Noticias (Valladolid, Spain), October 27, 2003. . Accessed January 18, 2010. Rodr´ıguez, Mar´ıa Pilar. “Extranjeras,” . Accessed January 15, 2010. Van Liew, Maria. “Immigration Films: Conventions of (In)visibility in Contemporary Spain.” Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre. Jay Beck and Vicente Rodr´ıguez Ortega, eds. Manchester, UK: Manchester UP, 2008: 259–278.