Faulkner, Sally. Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema.

Martin, Juan Carlos

Faulkner, Sally. Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema. London: Tamesis Books, 2004. 198 pp. Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema explores formal and ideological issues in the adaptation of twelve works to Spanish cinema and television. Sally Faulkner's examples are drawn from the "late dictatorship, transitional and democratic periods" (8) to provide a "historicist approach" (8). Her analysis counteracts previous ahistorical structuralist studies--and even Fidelity Criticism--in film and television adaptations.

Chapter One emphasizes particularly the ideological context of literary adaptations of "dissident, auteurist films and work that might be described as consensual [cine oficial] and commercialized" (12) during Franco's regime and proposes commenting on what they have to say on issues that range from gender, phallocentrism and patriarchy to their contrast of rural and urban spaces, and the function of nostalgia for the city (14), everything under a theoretical postmodern and historiographic framework.

Chapter two is devoted to exploring Mario Camus's film adaptation (1982) of Camilo Jose Cela's novel La Colmena and Vicente Aranda's film adaptation (1986) of Martin Santos' Tiempo de Silencio. Sally Faulkner attempts to go beyond previous critical studies on both film adaptations--mainly based on a structuralist model or "as betrayals of their literary originals" (19)--by providing an alternative study that addresses ideological questions by reading these adaptations as "histories" of the decade in which were produced, that is, by revealing the historical, social, political and cultural issues of 1980's that use the past as an indirect referent for the present (21-22). Faulkner's reading of Camus's film La Colmena discloses the "constructedness of historical representation" and the "artless quest for authenticity" (33), a postmodern combination that both mimics and criticizes Franco's official rhetoric. Moreover, the author--relying on Linda Hutcheon's postmodern theories--proposes a reading of Aranda's adaptation of Tiempo de Silencio as a "postmodern historiographic metafiction" (37) and illustrates the dichotomy between history and aesthetics, between the possibilities of an authentic historical representation and an allegedly impossibility of it.

Chapter three discusses four films that contrast rural and urban spaces in an attempt to deconstruct Francoist ideological views which traditionally portrayed the rural as an idyllic locus--representing national identity--and portrayed the industrialized city as an "urban nightmare" (49). Key to this analysis is the discussion of the concepts of visuality and hapticality, and Henri Lefebvre's concepts of absolute spaces--"space as 'lived'" (51), and abstract spaces--"space as 'conceived'" (51). Moreover, the author discusses the paradoxical relationship between nostalgia and rural space, and violence and urban space, a fact that seems to support dictatorship's conception of both rural and urban spaces.

Through a comparison between Cela's novel and Ricardo Franco's film adaptation, Faulkner explores the role of violence in "denouncing the deprivation of rural space" (59) and its role in stripping the film of any nostalgic element. Faulkner reads Los santos inocentes as a "work of nostalgia" (61) towards the rural space, both in the novel and in the film. However, the author also points out that this allegedly enjoyable nostalgic view--portrayed through the relationship between man and nature--obviates disturbing contradictory aspects of such nostalgia. In the film adaptation Historias del Kronen (Armendariz 1995), the author discusses the cinematic construction of violence and nostalgia in the city as both abstract and absolute spaces. The same questions of violence, alienation and nostalgia within these spaces are also explored in the film adaptation of the play Caricies (Pons 1998).

The fourth chapter focuses on Galdos' novel Fortunata y Jacinta and Clarin's La Regenta, and their subsequent screen adaptations. In the case of Galdos' adaptations, the author approaches these "visual narratives" (84)--in film (Fons 1970) and television (Camus 1980)--using a theoretical feminist, psychoanalytic and filmic framework to discuss issues of gender and audience identification. Faulkner proposes a substitute model for audience identification--the 'reaction shot'--especially in adaptations made for television, which allow for an innovative "Re-vision" (88) of preceding textual and visual patriarchal readings of the works. A key element to reading Galdos' visual adaptations is the ideology of angel del hogar which leads to a discussion on visual iconography, the male gaze, Francoist ideology and even the "symbolization of space" (101), among other things. In the second part of the chapter, Faulkner discusses the film and television adaptations--(Gonzalo Suarez 1974, Mendez Leite 1995)--of Clarin's La Regenta by focusing on feminist readings on patriarchal power, gender relations and the male gaze. It is also noteworthy that Faulkner offers an alternative reading to contradict mainstream depictions of female characters as "spectacle or objects" under patriarchal scrutiny and ideology (121), by exploring gender ambiguity within both visual adaptations.

In the fifth chapter Faulkner attempts to prove the artistic and stylistic debt that cinematographer Luis Bunuel owes novelist Galdos. Faulkner reviews previous critical readings--Marxist/Althusserian, historical, psychoanalytic, structuralist--on Galdos' oeuvre to establish its impact on Bunuel's film adaptations--(Nazarin 1958) and (Tristana 1970). Drawing on some of these theoretical approaches, the author asks formal questions about authorship, textual and cinematic narrators and "narrative ambiguity" (135), highlighting "the concept of mindscreen" (161).

Sally Faulkner's Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema is a challenging approach to adaptation studies in Spanish television and cinema. Students and professors less familiar with the contextual and ideological issues of literary adaptations will definitely benefit from her critical and theoretical analyses. Although at times the textual analysis of original works seems to impose on the formal examination of both film and television adaptations, she manages to keep the reader informed and maintain his or her interest. Perhaps Faulkner's discussions on television adaptations could use a more detailed theoretical framework, but overall, she manages to prove that previous studies on literary adaptations are lacking in ideological and contextual depth, thus her Literary Adaptations in Spanish Cinema deserves close attention.

JUAN CARLOS MARTIN

Stonehill College