Conflicting Conceptions of Domestic Space, Shantytowns and State Housing in Contemporary Argentine Cinema

ADRIANA LAURA MASSIDDA

Journal of Romance Studies

Liverpool University Press

Año: 2018

1473-3536

This article analyses the ways in which two contemporary Argentine films, Villa (Ezio Massa, 2013) and Diagnóstico esperanza (César González, 2013), portray domestic space. It argues that both films, in different ways, challenge the state notion of home as a cell of a larger, normalised, social system. Villa, which takes place in the shantytown Villa 21, emphasises the dynamism and liveliness of public spaces, and refers to residents´ solidarity. In contrast, Diagnóstico esperanza takes place in the social housing complex Carlos Gardel and focuses on a verbally violent single-parent household. Even though both films denounce the marginalisation of the urban poor, Villa ultimately celebrates the qualities of shantytown space, while Diagnóstico esperanza complicates the relationship between people and their lived environment, radically questioning the idea of what constitutes a functional society. Thus, both films are revealed to be antithetical to the very notion of ´home´ that the state once intended to impose.