The Argentine Camila and the Mexican Sor Juana are based on real women, whose well-documented stories are well known in their own countries. Camila - whose sub-title is Symbol o f a Passionate Woman - re-tells the historically- based story o f the twenty-year-old Camila O’Gorman and Catholic priest,
Ladislao Gutiérrez, their love affair and their elopement (12 December 1847). In the film, Camila (Susu Pecoraro) is the seducer o f a priest. Her transgression (social as well as sexual) is to state her sexual desire. Camila’s father is a supporter o f the dictator Rosas and is associated with his daughter’s pursuit and eventual execution by firing squad. Camila is pregnant when executed. The film opens as a sumptuous costume drama - filmed on location. The early scenes - viewed through a pink lens - wash Camila’s story in red’s more
softened symbolisms o f love. By the time o f the lovers’ executions, the wash o f pink has become sepia, and their costumes made o f sack rather than satin. Thus the colours darken as the story draws towards its bloody climax.
The protagonist o f Yo, la peor de todas - Golden Age poet, Mexican nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), thought o f as the most significant woman writer in the Latin American colonial period - enacts ‘one o f (history’s) most intense and personal confessions on the search for knowledge.’1 The film concentrates on Juana’s writing life in the convent o f San Jerónimo, her eventual confession that she, ‘the worst woman o f all,’ was unworthy and her
renunciation o f the intellectual transgressions involved in her poetry and ideas. The film flashes back to significant past moments in the poet’s formation: her (subsequently foiled) determination to enter the university as a man, the ‘trial’ o f her knowledge whilst a young lady-in-waiting at the court, and her friendship with SigUenza, another (but male) poet. The film also charts her friendship with the Spanish vicereine, Maria Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga. Whilst, as Bergmann (1998) notes, its Baroque composition places this costume drama in 1
1 Bemberg says this (in Burton-Carvajal 1997, 7S-92) o f Sor Juana’s autobiographical Respuesta a Sor Filotea/Replv to Sister Filotea (1997, originally 1691).
the 17th century, the mise-en-scène draws attention to its artifice and
constructedness. Bemberg eventually eschewed filming on location in Mexico and opted instead for studio sets designed by the Polish art director Voytek.2 His sets o f harsh geometric lines reinforce the nature o f Juana’s bold intellect (as does the angular beauty o f Assumpta Sema).3 Bemberg’s director of
cinematography, Félix Monti, has said (in King, Whitaker and Bosch 2000,47- 48), signalling the importance o f Zurbarán, that ‘With Voytek, we explored hard light, and the struggle between light and shadow that one finds in metaphysical paintings.’ Elsewhere Monti has said, ‘We looked at Spanish painters, Murillo, and Velasquez, but especially Velasquez.’4 Thus Bemberg’s set is deliberately painterly. What Bemberg wanted to capture from all of these models was ‘a strong light o f volume’ that would reflect the light o f Juana’s mind.5
2. History
Although in these films Bemberg’s protagonists are real historical women, this chapter’s examinations are underlined by the idea that there are different truths to all stories.6 Nevertheless, in both films is a search for a kind o f exactitude. In
2 Reported reasons for Bemberg's choices here are mixed and contradictory. It is commonly thought that Bemberg declined Mexican co-production money since she did not want to make another historical costume drama, set in a Mexican convent, and starring Ofelia Medina. Graciela Galán accompanied Bemberg to Mexico for two months looking for suitable locations, however, and said that Bemberg eventually declined shooting on location only because it was too expensive. Nevertheless it is true that Bemberg was accused of ‘treachery’ to Mexico (for choosing the Catalan Assumpta Serna, as well as for shooting in an Argentine studio). 3 Discussion o f Bemberg’s choice o f Sema to play Sor Juana is reserved to the analysis of Bemberg’s use o f stars in Chapter Six.
4 Félix Monti (Buenos Aires, 25 August 2000).
s In full, Félix Monti (Buenos Aires, 25 August 2000) said, ‘I talked much with Maria Luisa about this light. It had to be stronger, more stated to show Juana’s strength. She wanted to create a strong light o f volume.’
6 Bemberg was quite open about those episodes that - in order to dramatise situations - she invented for Yo. la peor de todas. These included the kiss between the young Juana and a courtier, and the relaxing o f protocol between the vicereine and the nun in the latter’s library. To enable a scene with Juana outside the convent, Bemberg also made up the scene o f Juana’s ill mother (in Burton-Carvajal 1997, 80).
exploring the lives o f real women, they want to get to the heart o f them. One point o f their historical communications is that the heart matters. Thus we must ask what kinds o f historical ‘truth’ and ‘heart’ Camila and Yo. la peor de todas are telling. Bemberg said, ‘I wanted Sor Juana’s story to be told in an atemporal and universal way in order to attack a plague that is still with us which is fundamentalism, in other words, fanaticism of all types - religious, ideological, sexist’ (in Burton-Carvajal 1997, 82-84). Bemberg’s statement makes clear that for her some o f history’s ‘truths’ are not only made universal and timeless by an analogy with contemporary events, but can be reconstructed as a projection towards her country’s future. Certainly Camila, released in the first year o f a restored democracy, could be defined (and was received) as part o f the impulse towards a new national identity. In this, Bemberg is like Jean Renoir who, in La Grande illusion/The Grand Illusion (France, 1937), ‘wanted to act upon history, to act for peace’ (Ferro 1998,161). This chapter will argue that Bemberg’s historical films ‘act (particularly) upon’ the power o f the Catholic Church in Argentina. Bemberg’s challenge to the new future lies in her descriptions o f Camila and Sor Juana as up against, and resisting the Catholic Church. Lita Stantic (Bemberg’s producer) confirmed that the scene where Camila and the priest make love on the kitchen table whilst there is a Christian procession outside, was intended by Bemberg to be ‘absolutely’ provocative to the Catholic Church.7 Nevertheless, ten years after the return o f democracy (31 May 1994) and ten years after she filmed Camila’s execution, Bemberg was still impelled to write a letter to La Nación: Responding to Pope John Paul’s claim (9 May 1
1 Lita Stantic (Buenos Aires, 24 September 2000). As testimony to the then-ontinuing repressive power o f the Church in Argentina it is worth noting that The Life of Brian (Terry Jones, United Kingdom. 1986) and The Last Temptation o f Christ (Martin Scorsese, USA, 1996) were banned on their release.
1994) that his Church’s priestly ordination was reserved ‘from the beginning exclusively to men,’ Bemberg finishes with the challenge, ‘We (women) are not yet decapitated.’8