The perspective of the child and the adolescent in the Latin America cinema not only provides an
insight to the individual process of development but also serves as an intriguing national allegory.
By examining the parameters and themes provided by the genre which deals with the growth
of the protagonist from youth to adulthood—Bildungsroman—, Marcela Said´s movie The Summer
of Flying Fish (2013), explores the learning path and the rebellion experienced by the adolescent
subject in the context of socio-economic and cultural tensions between the Chilean middle class and the mapuche communities. In our reading, the adolescent´s social and emotional trajectory could be considered a symbolic failure, not only on the personal level but on the sociocultural one. Through suggestive stylistic techniques, Said suggests the different manifestations of uncertainty, helplessness, and inability of the young female adult to defy the sociocultural, patriarchal, and bourgeois system to which she belongs.
Keywords:
cine chileno, cine contemporáneo latinoamericano, Bildungsroman femenino
Diaz-Zambrana, R. (2018). The Female Bildungsroman in The Summer of Flying Fish (Marcela Said, Chile, 2013). Comunicación Y Medios, (37), 24–35. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-1529.2018.45118
