three amigos

Deborah Shaw is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Portsmouth

• IntroductionGuillermo del Toro: the Alchemist1. Cronos: Introducing Guillermo del Toro2. Generating an Authorial Presence with Hellboy II: The Golden Army 3. El Laberinto del Fauno: Breaking Through the Barriers of FilmmakingAlejandro González Iñárritu: Independent Filmmaker4. Change to Crashing into the International Film Market with Amores Perros5. 21 Grams: An American Independent Film made by Mexicans6. Babel and the Global Hollywood GazeAlfonso Cuarón: A Study of Auteurism in Flux7.1 Sólo Con tu Pareja: Bringing the Middle Classes Back to Mexican Cinemas7.2 Less than Great Expectations: Working within the Hollywood System 8. Cuarón Finds his Own Path: Y Tu Mamá También9. Children of Men: the Limits of RadicalismConclusionAppendix: Discussion thread on comicbookresources.com about del Toro and Mignola and the Hellboy films.BibliographyFilmography Index

Shaw concisely and efficiently utilizes a number of theoretical fields in her discussion, including careful scrutiny of the marketing, profits and the attendant creative freedoms and constraints these suppose, in addition to carrying out close textual analysis of key stylistic and technical characteristics of the films. This is an important book that convincingly argues that these three amigos, who are the most successful filmmakers of Mexican origin in financial and international terms, are exemplars of transnational filmmaking and demonstrates the multiple ways in which their ‘films have caused critics to rethink classificatory borders’ (225).