Signifying the Nation: (In)Communication, Absence and National (Be)Longing in Marc Evans’s Patagonia (2010)

Patagonia (2010) is a critically acclaimed film which interrogates the relationship between myth and national/cultural identities. The film charts the transformational journeys of two women at different stages of their lives: Gwen, who is searching for her future, and Cerys, who is looking for her past. Within the parallel narratives, we are also led to explore the immigrant story and the colonial legacy which provided the impulse for immigration and was also its result. Patagonia thus explores national and cultural identities via the significance of Patagonia, the place, within the national myth of Wales, as well as interrogating Welsh identities, as characters search for a place to belong. This essay considers how issues related to Welsh national identity, longing and belonging are addressed in the film, and how the film articulates the need to (re)create social and cultural selfhood, establishing a sense of identity that challenges cultural hegemonies. In so doing, it draws on post-colonial paradigms of cultural hybridity and Bhabha’s theory of interstitial spaces.