off Kika; the rapist then escapes. A videotape of Kika's rape is
later featured on a trash TV show called Lo peor del día (The
Worst of the Day).

These representations of multiple rape in two recent and widely
screened Spanish films might have led some movie-goers to
conclude along with Rosa Bosch that, in the context of Spain,
the phrase 'feminist cinema' could only be considered an oxys-
moron. The first scene described is situated at the opening of
Jaime Chávarri's 1988 film Yo soy el que tú buscas (I'm the One
You're Looking for), while the second appears at the centre
of Pedro Almodóvar's 1993 work, Kika. Both films exhibit a slickly
packaged cinematic style, with creative art direction and bold
cinematography; both also rely on the parodic tone, intertex-
tual references, and self-reflexive gestures characteristic of post-
modern discourse. Thanks in large part to their connection with
prestigious names, the two films were extensively distributed
outside Spain on the big and small screen. Chávarri's work is
one of a series of six cinematographic adaptations of narratives
by the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Márquez
, which were underwritten by Televisión Española (TVE),
shot by five different Latin American directors in addition to
Chávarri, and released under the collective title Amores dificiles
(Difficult Loves). This series, representative of one aspect of TVE's
unprecedented influence on the national (and Latin American)
film industry beginning in the last decade, ¹ was premiered at
the 1988 Valladolid festival and then aired on television in Spain
in October, November, and December of that year. Elsewhere
the films appeared on the festival circuit and in theatres as
standard features, as well as on public television. Video copies
of Chávarri's film, along with the other titles in the series, are
currently available for rental and sale throughout the Americas;
in the United States, they are also marketed under the García

For a brief but lucid analysis of the ideological implications of the 'Difficult Loves'
series in particular and the pros and cons of Spanish Television's relationship with
Latin American cinema, see Rich, 188-9.

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