ESSAYS

Two different films, one similar poetics: That Obscure Object of Desire by Luis Buñuel and Labyrinth of Passion by Pedro Almodóvar

The author of this paper considers the similarities of the films Cet obscur objet du désir (1977) by Luis Bunuel and Laberinto de pasiones (1982) by Pedro Almodóvar from a psychoanalytical perspective, commenting on their common roots in the Spanish political and cultural context and the transition of the sexual desire into the desire to overcome class and gender relations and – in line with Baudrillard’s thesis – the transition of the desire to commit an act of terrorism – which is prophetically, as a state of postmodernist world saturated with information, according to Bunuel “the last horseman of the apocalypse”, thematized in both films, into the reality of an act of terrorism of our times, that is, into the “spectacle of terror” or “the terror of spectacle”.

Marijan Krivak