Bodies of Absence: Analysis of the Representation of Family Grief in the Face of the Abduction of Daughters in Ruido (Natalia Beristáin, 2022) and Pororoca (Constantin Popescu, 2017)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the way in which the struggle and suffering on the part of the family in the face of a daughter’s abduction is represented in two films, the Mexican film Ruido (Natalia Beristáin, 2022) and the Romanian film Pororoca (Constantin Popescu, 2017). The insecurity situation in México and Romania is so different to the point of establishing two models. The records of assassinations of police officers, political candidates, journalists and the forced disappearance of young people in México surpass those of any other country. Firstly, in the Mexican model, the analysis takes as an archetypal model the figure of Demeter, a Greek divinity (goddess of agriculture), whose daughter, Persephone, was abducted for sexual purposes by Hades, god of the underworld. The unexpected absence of the daughter, the desperate search, as well as the lack of clues and traces, plunge the mother into a spiral of pain that leads her to an anguished search. On the other hand, in the Romanian model, the loneliness of the searching father, solitary and without collective support, stands out. The analysis proposes, in the Mexican case, the category “strident sequence”, whose function is to regulate the narrative flow and the subjective construction of the character in the face of the irreparable pain of loss.