Experiencing Latin American modernities: Melodramatic strategies in the films La vendedora de rosas and Pizza, birra, faso

Abstract

This article aims to update the notion of "melodramatic" as cultural base of two contemporary Latin American films: Pizza, birra, faso [Pizza, beer, fag] (Argentina 1997) and La vendedora de rosas [The roses seller girl] (Colombia 1998). These two films, framed in the so-called "new Latin American realism" can be conceived as two audiovisual strategies that construct, through melodramatic forms, several discourses that indicate, refer, and problematize different ways through which individuals construct their identities and experience the different modernities in Latin America, in the context of late transnational capitalism.