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Rué tal o, Victoria, and Dolores Tierney, eds. Latsploitation, Exploitation Cinemas, and Latin America. New York and London: Routledge, 2009. xiii + 328 pp.
The common object of scrutiny of the seventeen essays that comprise this welcome addition to the critical literature on Latin-American popular cinema is the kind of film so often disdained by critics for their absurdly low budgets, actors of often dubious talents and a dedication to largely debased genres of exploitation cinema that the editors have labeled "Latsploitation." These are usually not the kinds of films that invite conceptual or theoretic reflection by serious scholars. Yet, as Ruotalo, Tierney and their fellow scholars handily demonstrate, there are productive ways to read beneath the literalness of bad acting, clichéd plots and poor production values that generally characterize these works to uncover subversive forms of cultural resistance to the established order of Latin America's largely derivative popular film forms.
Through an array of often ingenious reading strategies, the various authors challenge the facile assumption that what we are talking about is simply trash and bad taste. Their approach, as the editors say in their introduction, is to "reinvent the frame" (1), that is, to contextualize exploitation genres in light of the larger picture of film production, exhibition and circulation by Latin-American filmmakers, especially as these films circulate across borders and even regions. It is precisely the international circulation of these works, perhaps enhanced by their heavy dose of violence, gore and sex, that the volume effectively tracks as a series of transnational cinematic tropes that apparently appeal to global audiences.
Two critical objectives clearly motivate the various authors. The first is...