The contemporary road movie as a space of vulnerability, grief, and repair
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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4048-8253
Antonella Carpio Arias
Abstract
The article analyzes how the contemporary road movie transforms the classic notion of external travel into an emotional experience linked to grief. From a theoretical framework based on studies of affect and film phenomenology, it examines the construction of transit as a space for emotional processing. The methodology adopts a comparative qualitative approach based on the film analysis of Nomadland (Chloé Zhao, 2020), Drive my car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021), and A real pain (Jesse Eisenberg, 2024), focusing on the representation of landscape, temporality, and corporeality as narrative axes of grief. The results show that these films turn displacement into an emotional practice where loss is processed through movement, memory, and companionship. It is concluded that the current road movie operates as an aesthetic and affective device that reinterprets mobility as a mode of sensitive reconstruction, in which vehicular transit becomes a surface for inhabiting vulnerability and contemporary interdependence.
How to Cite
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ROAD MOVIE, CINEMATOGRAPHY, AFFECTIVITY, JOURNEY, GRIEF, NOMADLAND (FILM, 2020), DRIVE MY CAR (FILM, 2021), A REAL PAIN (FILM, 2024)
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