La ciudad, el arte, los cuerpos: resignificaciones del espacio fílmico en Ema (Pablo Larraín, 2019)

Abstract

This work proposes a study of the film Ema (Pablo Larrain, 2020), in which the relationship between location (showing the city of Valparaiso, building interiors) and film space (managing the narrative point of view, staging work) is explicitly connected. To this end, we will use a methodology of analysis of discourse eminently spatial such as the proposed by Catala Domenech (2019), which places the focus on space as a generator of significant elements. We will apply it to two specific fields of the film: the display of artistic activities— performance in opposition to urban art —and the narration of the affective life of the protagonists—break of the shot/reverse shot codes as a synonym of the new family models. We will show that the emancipatory content and social problems of the film are directly connected to its use of space, and specifically, to the relationships established between the uses of the protagonist's body (linked to jouissance, art, motherhood and destruction) and the mechanisms of staging.