Canassa

This research investigates the cinematographic work of the Spanish director and the reinvention of classic Hollywood melodrama such as Douglas Sirk’s women’s films. The Spanish film-maker caused a reconfiguration of the film genre and with his insights shifts the social role of women from their conventional place in cinema. The research also makes it possible to establish a debate in the field of psychoanalysis with the formulations of Sigmund Freud, Georges Bataille, Judith Butler, E. Ann Kaplan and Laura Mulvey around melodramatic characters and their internal conflicts. Melodrama is renewed through its ironic forms and the appropriation of intertextuality, dialogue with cinema itself, works of art, literature, music and dance, incorporating them into its narratives and imprinting its authorial mark.