Virgin on the edge: Luis Buuel's transnational trope

This article attempts to steer a path between the predominant body of criticism that tends to focus on personal psychologizing readings of the cinema of Luis Buuel and a more recent perspective that has considered the less-studied Mexican films with a view to determining their place within notions of national cinema. Through a reading of El ngel exterminador alongside Viridiana, Miles argues that Silvia Pinal functions as a figure of liminality, expressing the ambiguities of border crossing inherent in Buuel's destabilizing transnational cinema. The latter part of the article considers more recent cinematic examples, including the work of Lynch and Von Trier, to illustrate the legacy of the works considered.