Intersexuality, Polyamory, and Lesbianism in Women's Filmmaking: Patricia Ortega’s Yo, imposible (2018) and Ruth Caudeli’s Petit Mal (2022)

This chapter examines two woman-authored twenty-first-century films made in Venezuela and Colombia: Patricia Ortega’s Yo, imposible (Being Impossible, 2018), and Ruth Caudeli’s Petit Mal (2022). Both films address new paradigms of gender which have not been depicted before in the cinema of both nations, where heteronormativity has prevailed. The former addresses intersexuality through a woman’s body, while the latter tackles the dynamics that emerge from a polyamorous relationship involving three women. Although there has been influential scholarship on LGBTIQ+ themes in Latin American cinemas since the early 2010s, there is still limited work on the subject applying queer studies and lesbian studies as a theoretical framework, especially when centered on the work of women filmmakers who represent women’s genderless concerns. Considering these scholarly fields as a basis, this chapter explores how both filmmakers cinematically construct diverse existences and subjectivities of LGBTIQ+ women. It thus discusses the visual strategies that showcase queer and lesbian subjects, recognizing the ways in which these representations go beyond heteropatriarchal standards and sexual dissidence. Consequently, the chapter acknowledges and examines the directors’ aesthetic/political projects, as well as the connections that emerge between the (queer) gaze, archive, and representation.