El virus y el miedo: el sida en el cine español

Abstract

HIV/Aids has featured as a theme in well-known films worldwide but it rarely appears in Spanish cinema. This chapter describes its thematic and aesthetic treatment in five important Spanish films: Todo sobre mi madre (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999), Cachorro (Miguel Albaladejo, 2004), Princesas (Fernando León de Aranoa, 2005), El orfanato (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007), and Estiu 1993 (Carla Simón, 2017). These films are representative of the ways in which HIV/Aids is represented in Spanish cinema at large, including the tendency to present it as a secondary plot line and the use of the spectator’s previous knowledge and assumptions, which films mobilize in an attempt to avoid lengthy background descri..