Lina Romay and the explicit body between 'Plaisir à trois' and 'Gemidos de placer'

Abstract

This article analyzes how actress Lina Romay intervened in and reconfigured Jess Franco’s cinema through a physical presence described as an unfolding or explicit body. Through two films that are highly significant in her career, Plaisir à trois (1973) and Gemidos de placer (1982), it examines how Romay’s body operates as a narrative axis that challenges the conventions of traditional erotic cinema and Spain’s destape genre. By shedding idealizations and rejecting the classic fetishistic male gaze, Romay represents a shift in the cinematic representation of desire and sexuality, aligning with the sociopolitical context of Spain’s Transition. The analysis explores her gestures, wardrobe, and performance in conjunction with the use of long takes and moving cameras to amplify the narrative discourse, challenging prejudices and stereotypes about the female body and eroticism. Lina Romay’s work with Jess Franco emerges as a cinema that, from the margins, destabilizes dominant narratives about sex and desire, opening cracks in the political and aesthetic space and allowing the emergence of new female subjectivities.