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My Dearest Senorita (Mi querida señorita) + introduction by Anick Soni (15*)

Queer 70s

,Cinema 2
A male-presenting character stands on the left, pointing at something ahead of them. A woman stands on the right, her gaze following his finger.

Jaime de Armiñán’s Oscar-nominated drama made, extraordinarily, in Franco’s Spain, is an early and sympathetic portrait of identity and being intersex.

Adela (José Luis López Vázquez de la Torre) is a spinster who is desperately unhappy. Convinced there is something wrong with her – owing to a need to shave regularly and her complex romantic feelings towards her maid – Adela visits her doctor, who advises that she was assigned the wrong sex at birth. After surgery, and a name change, ‘Juan’ (still played by López Vázquez) re-starts his life as a man and hopes to find happiness.

Under Franco’s dictatorship, sympathetic portrayals of queer and intersex characters were almost non-existent. While its depiction of gender and sex identity may have dated, it’s a small miracle that My Dearest Senorita dodged the censor’s scissors. A small supporting role is played by Chus Lampreave, later a regular of Pedro Almodóvar, whose queer cinema would thrive in the years after Franco’s death.

Tagged with: Cinema Queer 70s

In Spanish with English subtitles

Please note this film contains outdated representation of an LGBTQIA+ character.

Film information

Release year: 1972

Country: Spain

Director: Jaime de Armiñán

Runtime: 1 hour 20 min

Anick Soni (He/Him) is a writer, researcher, and consultant who is queer and intersex. His focus is on exploring identity, intimacy, and representation. His work blends lived experience with social critique to challenge how stories are told - and who gets to tell them.

Cinema 2