Explores the compelling ways that new-wave Mexican directors use the tropes and themes of Golden Age films to denounce the excesses of a nation characterized as a fragmented and fictitious construct. Analysing big hits and quiet successes of both Golden Age and new-wave cinema, the author offers in each chapter a comparative reading of films from the two eras.

Mexican Melodrama offers a timely look at critically acclaimed films that serve as key referents in discussions of Mexican cinema. Elena Lahr-Vivaz artfully portrays the dominant conventions of historical and contemporary Mexican cinema, showing how new-wave directors draw from a previous generation to produce meaning in the present.