The Red Squirrel - La Ardilla Roja and Issues of Basque Regional Identity

La Ardilla Roja and Issues of Basque Regional Identity

Though Medem is a Basque, and others of his films have dealt explicitly with Basque regional identity, it is not an immediately obvious theme in La ardilla roja. The main characters are played by non-Basques (Suárez is from Madrid, Novo from Galicia, Barranco indelibly Andalusian in popular consciousness after her role in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), and much of the action is set at the campsite in La Rioja, a liminal region between the Basque country and Castile.

Nevertheless, touches of Basqueness are apparent. Major characters' names are Basque ('Elisa Machinbarrena Fuentes', 'Jota Fernández Arregui') and place names are given in their Euskera forms rather than Spanish ('Donostia' for San Sebastián). Attention is given specifically to questions of identity: when Jota checks in at the campsite, for instance, he signs 'vasco' ('Basque') for his nationality. There are also recurrent echoes of the semi-mythic past that Basque nationalism has reconstructed for the Basque country: video clips of Jota's group Las moscas ('The Flies') are reminiscent of the Basque country's supposed pre-Indo-European stone age ancestry; settings including the forest, lake and zoo evoke mythology or ruralised narratives of Basque history. Finally, if violence in a Basque context has a very specific connotation—that of ETA -- which is represented in Félix's random violence and self-mutilation, then Lisa/Sofía's amnesia can be read as an attempt on the part of Basque society to forget and escape from the violence of the past and establish a new identity for the Basque country that is not founded around ETA.