Creating a Feminist Gaze?: Motherhood and Identity in Recent Costa Rican Cinema

This chapter develops the notion of the feminist gaze, analyzing the mother characters in the Costa Rican films Apego (Attachment, Patricia Velázquez, 2019) and El despertar de las hormigas (The Awakening of the Ants, Antonella Sudasassi, 2019). It begins by outlining both the existing tropes of motherhood as seen in popular film, as well as advancing the concept of the feminist gaze as a framework for the study of film. It goes on to consider specific aspects of Apego and El despertar, considering how the protagonists first adhere to but then break with the idea of the sacrificial mother, before examining how, both through the narrative and visually, the films reject the fixed, binary notion of the “good” or “bad” mother, and show instead mother characters as individuals, disentangling their identities from their roles as mothers in a positive way. The analysis shows that the expectations of the role of mother clash with the protagonists’ individual identities and desires, while also simultaneously embodying these oppositional forces. As such, the chapter argues that these films create a nuanced vision of cinematic motherhood which is firmly rooted in the psychic and emotional world of the female protagonist.