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Rebuilding the Wounded Self: Impairment and Trauma in Isabel Coixet’s The Secret Life of Words and Pedro Almodóvar’s Los abrazos rotos

the last forty years, disability continues to pose a problem for feature film screenwriters and directors who struggle to portray it in ways which avoid negative stereotypes.1 Rather than treating illness and impairment as an integral part of human existence (most of those who live past a certain age will have a direct experience with either or both), they often appear in feature film as exceptional events that serve as vehicles to speak about other often political concerns. Conceived of as an interruption or threat to a certain view of health or normalcy, disability, illness and trauma are ascribed powers of revelation and transformation which are meant to give narrative symbolic weight. Yet more writers and artists are breaking with this ancient tradition (one need only think of Oedipus to see how blindness has been ascribed symbolic importance). Film in particular is a visual medium that offers a rare opportunity to put a face on disability and illness or trauma. This essay brings together two of Spain’s most international contemporary filmmakers—Pedro Almodóvar and Isabel Coixet—to examine how they approach disability, its connection to trauma and the question of how to rebuild (or accept) a wounded self. Aside from the fact that both directors are from Spain one might point out that much separates them: while Coixet is from Catalonia and has made the vast majority Victoria Rivera-Cordero is Associate Professor of Spanish at Seton Hall University. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University in Spanish Literature as well as a Master of Arts in Comparative Literature from Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Paris III). She has published on renaissance, medieval and contemporary Spanish literature and film in journals such as Hispania and La Corónica. Her present book project is entitled Strategies of the Self: Discourses of Interiority, Illness and Disability in Early Modern Spain