A Sense of Humor and Society in Three Chilean Comedies: Taxi para tres, Sexo con Amor, and Super, Todo Chile adentro

Abstract

I analyze three contemporary Chilean films: Taxi para tres (2001) by Orlando Lübbert, Sexo con amor (2003) by Boris Quercia, and Super, Todo Chile adentro (2009) by Fernanda Aljaro and Felipe del Río. My contention is that, through humor, these three films evidence the dual nature of neoliberal globalization in Chile and, more specifically, a certain dominant and widely spread Chilean self-understanding within this transformation. The three comedies outline an arc that goes from the external satirical denunciation of the new (im)moral codes of conduct resulting from that transformation (Taxi para tres) to their thorough and complete internalization at the diegetical and extradiegetical levels in Super, Todo Chile adentro. Sexo con amor, the second most successful national film ever in Chile, is at the midpoint of this arc. Beyond its very direct treatment of sexual relations in three couples belonging to three traditional social classes in Chilean society, its most effective mechanism is its insistence on the ways in which sex, love, and marital complications are issues and experiences shared across social strata. From this viewpoint, the film would be a relative and populist counterpart to Taxi and Super and their, respectively, critical and cynical insistence on the stratified nature of the new Chilean society produced by neoliberalism.