Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema

Live Flesh demonstrates how contemporary Spanish films have contributed to a re-shaping of the masculine image.  The authors explore the complexity and diversity of these images, while focusing on Spanish films of the democratic period, both popular and auteur. The analysis is drawn from examples of directors, both of national and international prominence, such as Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, Bigas Luna and Julio Medern, as well as films featuring acclaimed actors who have contributed to the construction of contemporary ideas of the masculine in their country, such as Antonio Banderas and Javier Bardem.Using a fresh theoretical framework, embracing queer and feminist theory and theories of nation, race and class, each chapter examines the key films that represent the male body (young, muscular, homosexual, foreign and so on), then focuses in on recent case studies, from the early 1980s to the present.