During the Goya Awards Ceremony of 2010, Pilar Bardem, who was nominated for her role in La vida empieza hoy/Life Begins Today (dir. Laura Maná, 2009), pretended to be surprised when host José Corbacho kept his distance from her, having kissed on the lips all the other younger women that he had just introduced. Pilar Bardem's reaction appeared to be no less than an astute remark on the patriarchal logic described by the Spanish proverb ‘El que besa a una vieja, no besa’ (‘He who kisses an old woman does not kiss’) that led Corbacho to ignore completely an older female actor: because of her age, Bardem was invisible to him.

In a context of obsession with physical perfection and eternal youth, the cinematic representation of the older body, especially the older woman's body, implies a thematic and aesthetic challenge. As film critic Mimi Swartz has pointed out, ‘Hollywood has been notoriously merciless to women of a certain vintage or else dismissive of them’ (2004). How are middle-aged women – their body and sexuality – depicted in films directed by women filmmakers in Spain? How does ‘gynocine’ tackle female eroticism after 50? Unlike mainstream cinema, where glamorous girls are in the spotlight and ageing female actors are virtually invisible, a considerable number of female-authored films feature powerful (and often erotic) mature women centre-stage.

With no claim to be exhaustive, in these pages I will indicate some recurring patterns of how several Spanish women filmmakers approach ‘unseen’ eroticism. I will argue that their goal is to give visibility to the invisible, to reinscribe in public discourses what tends to be left out, and to grant depth and meaning to the female body: a signifier with no signified in Hollywood cinema, as Ruby Rich (1986) has described it.

In the following pages I will identify three groups of films. The first group attempts to eroticise and ‘spectacularise’ the uncommon view of the aroused mature woman. Despite its age, the older female actor's body is represented as the glamorous and erotically charged object of heterosexual desire, usually of a younger man. In order to eroticise the mature woman, these films intentionally adopt the strategies used by commercial cinema to represent and fetishise the younger female's body.