It Could Happen to You: Empathy and Empowerment in Iberian Austerity Cinema

Abstract

Crisis has come to stay in the Iberian Peninsula. Austerity policies applied in Spain and Portugal in the early 2010s have led to a sudden deterioration in the quality of life of their respective citizens, many of whom have lost their jobs, have been evicted from their homes or have been pushed to emigrate by the lack of prospects, among many other personal misfortunes. Such situations have been depicted in a new cycle of films that I call Iberian Austerity Cinema, in which the effects and consequences of the Great Recession are recurrently addressed at a thematic, formal and even allegorical level. Most of these films focus on individual stories of resignation and resistance in which ordinary people react to adversity in unexpected ways, entering a downward spiral that sometimes leads them to marginality and crime: thus, the young couple in 'Beautiful Youth' (Hermosa Juventud, Jaime Rosales, 2014), the father and daughter in 'Magical Girl' (Carlos Vermut, 2014), the five crazy pandas in 'Dying Beyond Their Means' (Murieron por encima de sus posibilidades, Isaki Lacuesta, 2014) and the boxer in 'Saint George' (São Jorge, Marco Martins, 2016) embody different social types, easily recognizable by the audience, that allow filmmakers to deal with thorny issues related to the recession, such as unemployment, emigration, corruption or indebtedness. The use of internal focalization reinforces the subjective dimension of these films, in which characters become the places of enunciation from which filmmakers discuss the outcome of austerity policies. Recession is therefore depicted through the characters’ experiences, and especially through their gaze. The analysis of the formal and narrative strategies of these works will help us to understand their politics of representation and, what is more important, their contribution to the recent transformations in the self-image of Iberian societies.