“Para verte mejor”: Female Gaze and Aesthetics in Chilean Bildungsfilms

As part of a trend to contest the female passivity assigned to women in the visual arts (see Berger, Mulvey), a Chilean female-authored cinema has been actively exploring the gaze of girls and adolescents in recent film productions. In this context, Bildungsfilms including El verano de los peces voladores (The Summer of Flying Fish, 2013), by Marcela Said, Rara (2016), by Pepa San Martín, and Tarde para morir joven (Too Late to Die Young, 2018), by Dominga Sotomayor, develop young female observation practices—in line with what Laura Mulvey describes as an “aesthetic of curiosity”—revealing diverging expressions of female agency in contemporary Chilean filmmaking. This essay examines how the active look of these female characters transitioning into adulthood contrasts with the range of actions available to minors to intervene in the reality surrounding them. Concurrently, by examining the gaze of young female characters, these filmmakers delve into processes that Rocha and Seminet identify as an intersubjectivity with the audience, inviting those “curious viewers” to inquire about relevant local issues that remain out-of-the screen in this cinema.