Old Tropes, New Hopes? Postmodern Preoccupations in Magical Girl

Resumen

The femme fatale synthesizes the narrative expectations of the thriller/film noir because she quells the very anxieties that she produces. Traditionally, her containment and corresponding destruction signal the prospect of hope by restoring the symbolic order. However, Carlos Vermut's neo-noir thriller, Magical Girl (2014), complicates this conventional portrayal through its postmodern sensibility. Backdropped by the Spanish crisis resulting from 21^st-century neoliberal failures and overconsumption, the film celebrates liminality and the fracturing of the human condition and meaning systems. Bárbara, the film's femme fatale, acts as a site of confluence whereby the dark underbelly of Madrid and the human psyche surface. The sociocultural anxieties in Spain stemming from the crisis along with those provoked by Bárbara converge, challenging the order of a world in crisis, while interrogating our role as spectators in this process.