No future / No hope / No narrative: Víctor Gaviria and his films Rodrigo D: No futuro, La vendedora de rosas, and Sumas y restas

Abstract

Starting with his directorial debut, Rodrigo D: No futuro (1990), until his magnus opus,  Sumas y restas (2005) –on the social phenomenon of narcotraffic in Medellín–, passing through what is arguably his best-known feature film, La vendedora de rosas (1998), the films of the Colombian director Víctor Gaviria put the distinction between the realms of reality and fiction in crisis, as well as the distinction between representation and what is represented. In this sense, Gaviria’s work challenges the whole notion of representation itself. In this article, I argue that this is due to the fact that Gaviria’s artistic project involves a permanent reflection on how to represent a reality that is, in the end, impossible to represent, such as the case of the violent reality of Medellín’s slums. Reading the three aforementioned films in reverse, starting with the most recent one and ending with the one that launched the director’s cinematic career, I suggest that the real contribution of Gaviria to film history is that, in order to consider the living experiences of those living in extreme marginality, at the periphery of the periphery, he reccurs to a model that is not based on representation but on auto-representation. This model has almost no narrative content, but it is highly affective, including the most wretched subjects of Medellín at the end of the 20^th Century, those subjects who lack future, hope, and even narratives.