Sentimental objects: Nostalgia and the child in cinema of the Spanish memory boom

Abstract

This article explores how two films from the so-called Spanish "memory boom" represent their child protagonists via a certain "anxiety of influence" in relation to their cinematic forebear El espiritu de la colmena (Erice, 1973). It argues that, despite their intertextual connection, these two more recent films differ from Erice's in terms of their representation of childhood, making use of the child as an instrument of didacticism and nostalgia. In so doing, they offer an image of the child instrumentalized as object, rather than fully realized as subject.