European Adaptations

European/Art Adaptations

It could be argued that when it comes to adaptations of Latin American narratives the difference between art and Hollywood film becomes blurred. Just from the list above one can see that, even if these films are funded by Hollywood, the director's are of international origin and, in some cases, careers. Polanski, of course, is Polish has made most of his films in Europe, several of which are full-blown art films: Repulsion (1965), The Tenant (1976), etc. Likewise Billie August is Danish, Newell and Amiel, British, Puenzo, Argentinean, and Schnabel, while a New Yorker, was first a modern painter, and you can't get much more European than that.

However, the blurring also can be seen in the sources chosen by both US-based and European-based filmmakers. The new Latin American literature of the 1960s--plus some older writers who were somehow assimilated to to this so-called Boom, such as Jorge Luis Borges--remain the principal source for adaptation. Michelangelo Antonioni, for instance, adapts, significantly without fully crediting, Julio Cortazar's "Las babas del diablo" ("The Devil's Drool") in his Blow-up and, in an incredible instance of an adaptation modifying its source, leads to the renaming of the Argentine writer's story in English and even a few other languages. In fact, Cortazar's work lies behind Jean Luc Godard's Weekend and, perhaps, Betrand Tavernier's Round Midnight. And Borges, Cortazar's mentor, is adapted by Bernardo Bertolucci in A Spider's Stratagem.


Be that as it may, the fact is that despite this "blurring," European art adaptations tend to favor the more experimental members of the Boom. Both Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa, despite their differences, are primarily concerned with telling stories. Even if Garcia Marquez's stories frequently, though not always, include supernatural elements, and Vargas Llosa plays with fractured narrative structures, both are also "storytellers" whose works present clearly discernable plots. Cortazar's work, on the other hand, experiments at the level of plot. For instance, in "The Devil's Drool," one is never sure what is actually being told.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Latin American film adaptations of its narrative, while still privileging the Boom writers, who are frequently seen as cultural heroes in the region, has shown a much greater variety in its choices. (Garcia Marquez himself has promoted the making of a large number of films loosely based on his work). As we will see in our class, contemporary authors such as Jorge Franco (Rosario Tijeras) or Alberto Fuguet (Red Ink), who has himself become a filmmaker, or even hoary 19th century classics, such Jorge Isaacs's Maria, remade for the nth time this year.