This chapter discusses the figure of the ageing female character as a sexual being in a wide selection of films directed by Spanish women filmmakers including Cecilia Bartolomé, Isabel Coixet, Pilar Miró, Josefina Molina or Paula Ortíz among others. The author usefully identifies a number of sometimes opposing strategies that serve to organise the films into three distinctive categories. Some films actively spectacularise the body of the mature and sexually active woman, others do the opposite and use the portrayal of the unglamorous older female body as a means to draw attention to and denounce the expectations set by the youth-obsessed mainstream film and media that displace mature women making them invisible. Finally, the chapter identifies a third group of films with ‘affirmative ageing’ discourses. This latter group of films actively encourage the spectator’s sensual engagement with the erotic experiences of the older women on the screen.
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