A film adaption of Isabel Allende’s Of Love and Shadows was made by Betty Kaplan in 1994. A scene from the film is found here, which appears to depict a seizure. Because this is magical realism, to ask whether it is “really” an epileptic seizure would be to miss the point. This appears to be a depiction of a seizure, but of course in the world of magical realism, the magic is just as real as anything else, and so the internal seizure finds its expression in, or expresses, external events. It is interesting that the woman with the seizure is empowered by her seizure.
In the book the seizures are specifically distinguished from epilepsy, and related instead to sexual taboo. “Digna knew the symptoms of epilepsy, and she knew that it did not wreak havoc with the furniture.”
Here’s a conventional trailer for the movie.
The book can be found through this path.
The book was originally published as De amor y de sombra (1984, Chile), and in English as Of Love and Shadows (1986.)
Recent Comments