BIGAS LUNA'S BILBAO AND EROTIC CINEMA IN POST-FRANCO SPAIN

The production of sex-themed cinema in Spain is inevitably linked to the political climate. There are other factors to take into account such as the crisis in the wider film industry – caused by a lack of international investment and poor box office takings in domestic markets. As John Hopewell notes, sex narratives became increasingly popular on Spanish screens from 1977. As he explains, this was partly due to the liberties allowed to filmmakers after the end of the dictatorship and the abolition of censorship, but also as a direct result of the crisis in the sector, which led to the exploration of new possibilities (1989: 287). In this period, films became more sexually explicit. New film classifications were introduced: the ‘S’ category was used for films that contained scenes that could offend the still-unadjusted sensitivity of conservative spectators; while the ‘X’ category was used for pornographic films. As Monterde has argued, the first post-Franco years saw ‘the emergence of sexual polymorphism, that is, of the variety of forms of relationships which Francoist censorship had repressed […]: homosexuality, transsexuality, incest, fetishism and various other “perversions”’ (1993: 165).

The political transition in Spain brought about a new democratic pluralism that encouraged new forms of artistic expression. Pepón Coromina, an exceptional producer in Figaro Films, was a decisive figure at that time. He pushed through a number of transgressive projects that set the tone for a vibrant new climate that energised the Spanish film industry of the Transition. It is thanks to Coromina that now-iconic projects including Bigas Luna's Bilbao (1978) or Almodóvar's Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón/Pepi, Lucy, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom (1980) came to fruition in Barcelona and Madrid almost simultaneously.

Bigas Luna's Bilbao (1978) stands out as a fundamental film of post-Franco Spanish cinema. It could be argued that the very stark depiction of the female body somehow deprives the film of its erotic content. This might explain why Vicente Benet writes that, unlike the films of Berlanga or even Almodóvar, the unsophisticated, commercial images that characterise cine S productions make us experience ‘an uneasiness that cannot be analysed just in terms of the film's socio-political contexts’ (Benet 2012: 386).