Almodóvar, Pedro
ALMODÓVAR, Pedro
Nationality: Spanish. Born: Calzada de Clatrava, La Mancha, Spain, 1951 (some sources say 1947). Career: Moved to Madrid and worked for National Telephone Company, 1967; wrote comic strips and articles for underground magazines; joined independent theatre group Los Goliardos and started making Super-8 films with them, 1974; first feature, Pepi, released 1980; also a rock musician, has written music for his own films. Awards: Glauber Rocha Award for Best Director, Rio Film Festival, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association "New Generation" Award, 1987, for Law of Desire; National Society of Film Critics Award, special citation for originality, 1988; Venice International Film Festival best screenplay award, National Board of Review of Motion Pictures best foreign film, New York Film Critics Circle best foreign film, and Felix Award for best young film, all 1988, and Academy Award nomination for best foreign film, Orson Welles Award for best foreign-language film, both 1989, all for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.Agent: El Deseo SA, 117 Velázquez, Madrid, Spain.
Films as Director:
- 1974
Dos putas, o, Historia de amor que termina en boda (TwoWhores, or, A Love Story that Ends in Marriage) (Super-8);La caida de Sodoma (The Fall of Sodom) (Super-8)
- 1975
Homenaje (Homage) (Super-8)
- 1976
La estrella (The Stars) (Super-8)
- 1977
Sexo va: Sexo vienne (Sex Comes and Goes) (Super-8);Complementos (shorts)
- 1978
Folle, folle, folleme, Tim (Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Tim)(Super-8, full-length); Salome (16mm)
- 1980
Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas de montón (Pepi, Luci, Bomand Lots of Other Girls) (+ sc)
- 1982
Laberinto de pasiones (Labyrinth of Passions) (+ sc, + pr, role)
- 1983
Entre tinieblas (Into the Dark; The Sisters of Darkness)(+ sc, song)
- 1984
Qué me hecho yo para merecer esto? (What Have I Done toDeserve This?) (+ sc)
- 1986
Matador (+ sc); La ley del deseo (Law of Desire) (+ sc, score, song)
- 1988
Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on theVerge of a Nervous Breakdown) (+ sc, + pr)
- 1990
Atame! (Tie Me up, Tie Me Down!) (+ sc)
- 1991
Tacomes lejanos (High Heels) (+ sc, song)
- 1993
Kika (+ sc)
- 1995
Le flor de mi secreto (The Flower of My Secret) (+ sc)
- 1997
Carne trémula (Live Flesh) (+ sc, role as himself)
- 1999
Todo sobre mi madre (All about My Mother) (+ sc)
Films as Producer:
- 1993
Acción mutante (Mutant Action)
- 1996
Mi nombre es sombra (assoc pr)
Publications
By ALMODÓVAR: books—
El sueno de la razon (short stories), Madrid, 1980.
Fuego en las entranas (Fire Deep Inside) (novel), Madrid, 1982.
Patty Diphusa y otros textos (Patty Diphusa and Other Writings), Barcelona, 1991.
Almodóvar on Almodóvar, London, 1995.
The Flower of My Secret, London, 1997.
By ALMODÓVAR: articles—
Interview in Contracampo (Madrid), September 1981.
Interview with J. C. Rentero, in Casablanca (Madrid), May 1984.
"Pleasure and the New Spanish Mentality," an interview with Marsha Kinder, in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Fall 1987.
Interview in Time Out (London), 2 November 1988.
Interview in Film Comment (New York), November/December 1988.
Interview in Films and Filming (London), June 1989.
Interview in Inter/View (New York), January 1990.
Interview in City Limits (London), 5 July 1990.
Interview with J. Schnabel, in Interview (New York), January 1992.
"Perche il melodrama," an interview with E. Imparato, in Cineforum (Bergamo, Italy), April 1992.
Interview with F. Strauss, in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), May 1992.
Regular column (as "Patty Diphusa") in La Luna (Madrid).
Interview in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), November 1997.
"The Pain in Spain," in Time Out (London), 10 May 1995.
Interview with Peter Paphides, in Time Out (London), 28 June 1995.
On ALMODÓVAR: books—
Bouza Vidal, Nuria, El cine de Pedro Almodóvar (The Films of PedroAlmodóvar), Madrid, 1988.
Boquerini, Pedro Almodóvar, Madrid, 1989.
Smith, Paul Julian, Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, London, 1994.
Vernon, Kathleen M., and Barbara Morris, Post-Franco, Postmodern:The Films of Pedro Almodóvar, Westport, Connecticut, 1995.
On ALMODÓVAR: articles—
Sanchez Valdès, J., "Pedro Almodóvar: Laberinto de pasiones," in Casablanca (Madrid), April 1982.
Paranagua, P. A., "Pedro Almodóvar. En deuxième vitesse," in Positif (Paris), June 1986.
Fernandez, Enrique, "The Lawyer of Desire," in Village Voice (New York), 7 April 1987.
Film Quarterly (Los Angeles), Fall 1987.
Kael, Pauline, "Red on Red," in New Yorker, 16 May 1988.
"Spain's Pedro Almodóvar on the Verge of Global Fame," in Variety (New York), 24 August 1988.
Kael, Pauline, "Unreal," in New Yorker, 14 November 1988.
Filmbiography, in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), January 1989.
Films in Review (New York), January 1989.
Corliss, Richard, "Almodóvar à la Mode," in Time (New York), 30 January 1989.
Arroyo, J., "Pedro Almodóvar: Law and Desire," in Descant, vol. 20, no. 1–2, 1989.
Cadalso, I., "Pedro Almodóvar: A Spanish Perspective," in Cineaste, vol. 18, no. 1, 1990.
O'Toole, L., "Almodóvar in Bondage," in Sight and Sound (London), vol. 59, no. 4, 1990.
Bennett, Annie, "Tour de Farce," in 20/20 (London), January 1990.
"Pedro Almodóvar," in National Film Theatre Booklet (London), July 1990.
Kinder, M., "High Heels," in Film Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 3, 1992.
Levy, S., "King of Spain," in American Film, January/February 1992.
Moore, L., "New Role for Almodóvar," in Variety (New York), 28 September 1992.
Strauss, F., "The Almodóvar Picture Show," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), September 1993.
Williams, Bruce, "Slippery When Wet: En-sexualized Transgression in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar," in Post Script (Commerce), Summer 1995.
Smith, P.J., "Almodóvar and the Tin Can," in Sight and Sound (London), February 1996.
Toubiana, S., "Masculin, feminin," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), November 1997.
* * *
Pedro Almodóvar is more than the most successful Spanish film export since Carlos Saura. At home, the production of Almodóvar's films, their premiers, and the works themselves are surrounded by scandal, and the Spanish popular press examines what the director eats, the qualities he looks for in a lover, and his weight fluctuations in a fashion normally reserved for movie stars and European royalty. Abroad, the films have surprised those with set notions of what Spanish camera is or should be; Almodóvar's uncompromising incorporation of elements specific to a gay culture into mainstream forms with wide crossover appeal has been held up as a model for other gay directors to emulate. The films and Almodóvar's creation of a carefully cultivated persona in the press have meshed into "Almodóvar," a singular trademark. "Almodóvar" makes the man and the movies interchangeable even as it overshadows both. The term now embodies, and waves the flag for, the "New Spain" as it would like to see itself: democratic, permissive, prosperous, international, irreverent, and totally different from what it was in the Franco years.
Almodóvar's career can be usefully divided into three stages: a marginal underground period in the 1970s, during which he personally funded and controlled every aspect of the shoestring-budgeted, generally short films, and which culminated in Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas de montón, his feature film debut; the early to mid-1980s, during which he was still writing and directing his increasingly costly though still low-budget films, but for other producers and with varying degrees of state subsidization; and, from The Law of Desire in 1986, a period in which he reverted to producing his own films, which now benefitted from substantial budgets (by Spanish standards), top technicians, and maximum state subsidies. Though critical reaction to his work has varied, each of his films has enjoyed increasing financial success until Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which became 1989's highest-grossing foreign film in North America and the most successful Spanish film ever in Spain.
Almodóvar's oeuvre makes a good argument for the auteur theory. One can trace to his first films themes and strategies that he would explore in different forms, with varying degrees of success but with increasing technical expertise, throughout the rest of his career. Almodóvar's films posit the absolute autonomy of the individual. From Pepi to Tie Me up! Tie Me Down! the central characters in his films (mostly women) either act as if there are no social restrictions, or are conscious of the price of transgression but willing to pay it if such actions lead to, or contain, pleasure.
In Almodóvar's films, the various paths to pleasure lead to a destination and fulfillment (Matador), a dead end and disappointment (Dark Hideout, Women on the Verge), or an endlessly winding path and continuous displacement (The Law of Desire), but never resignation. To explore these varied roads Almodóvar has over the years accumulated a rep company of actors (including Antonio Banderas, who graduated to Hollywoood stardom). When in an Almodóvar film, no matter how absurd the situation their characters might find themselves in, all the actors are directed to a style that relies on understatement and has often been called "naturalist" or "realist." For example, when in The Law of Desire Tina tells her brother that "she" had previously been a "he" and had run off to Morocco to have a love affair with their father, Carmen Maura acts it in a style considerably subtler than that used by, for example, June Allyson to tell us she really shouldn't have broken that date with Peter Lawford. This style of acting is partly what enables Almodóvar's often outrageous characters to be so emotionally compelling.
Almodóvar borrows indiscriminately from film history. A case in point is What Have I Done to Deserve This? which contains direct reference to, or echoes of, neo-realism, the caper film, Carrie, Buñuel, Wilder, Warhol, and Waters. Moreover, by his second period, beginning with Dark Hideout, it became clear that Almodóvar's preferred mode of cinema was the melodramatic. It is a mode that cuts across genre, equally capable of conveying the tragic and the comic, eminently emotional, adept at arousing intense audience identification, and capable of communicating complex psychological processes no matter what the character's gender or sexual orientation.
Almodóvar's signature, and a unique contribution to the movies, is the synthesis of the melodramatic mode with a clash of quotations. This combination allows Almodóvar both a quasi-classical Hollywood narrative structure (which facilitates audience identification) and a very self-conscious narration (which normally produces an alienation effect). This results in dialectical moments in which the absurd can be imbued with emotional resonance (the mother selling her son to the dentist in What Have I Done); the emotional can be checked with cheek without disrupting identification (superimposing a character's crying eyes with the wheels of a car in The Law); and camp can be imbued with depth without losing its wit (the transference of emotions that occurs when we see Pepa dubbing Joan Crawford's dialogue from Johnny Guitar in Women on the Verge). At his best (What Have I Done to Deserve This?, The Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), Almodóvar drills a heart into the postmodern and fills it with an operatic range of feeling.
Although Almodóvar's movies have garnered increasingly heady praise in the 1990s, one senses the critical establishment is consciously trying to legitimize him in their eyes. Why is it that when a comedy expert grows more "serious," he is, perforce, taken more seriously? Fortunately, Almodóvar's mature works remain vibrant, unpretentious melodramas (unlike Woody Allen, whose art films seem like Xerox copies of the masters he slavishly imitates). Although Almodóvar has been chastised for trying to have his soap opera and send it up, too, he accomplished just that impossibility with earlier works like Law of Desire. As arrestingly sentimental as All about My Mother is, and as disturbingly mournful as Live Flesh is, they lack the kick of less-acclaimed works like High Heels, an unabashed glimpse into the soul of Lana Turner. Whereas Almodóvar once passionately embraced the Hollywoodness of Douglas Sirk's women pictures, his most recent movies merely buss those stylized conventions on the cheek. Why is there such a frenzy to commend the new-improved maverick, simply because he now uses humor only as a diversionary tactic, instead of an integral part of his canon? Despite reservations about the shift in his approach, one admires Almodóvar's unabated insight into role-playing, his debunking of machismo, his celebration of tackiness, and his unsurpassed skill with actresses. If something joyful seems missing from latter-day Almodóvar, something has also been gained in his collaboration with actress Marisa Paredes, a gravely beautiful dynamo, whom the director uses to suggest the melancholy behind emotional extravagance. If films like The Flower of My Secret are high-wire acts between pathos and humor, then Paredes helps him keep his balance. Even if one reminisces about Almodóvar's teamwork with efervescent comediennes like Carmen Maura and Victoria Abril, one is relieved that he hasn't become the Spanish John Waters, a filmmaker whose rebelliousness now seems quaint. Exploring his gay sensibility, Almodóvar appeals to straight audiences, who share his appetite for the resurrection and re-invigoration of old movie cliches. In overlooked works like Kika, characters literally die for love, and this slick director understands that classic escapism has undying appeal for a reason. The genius of Almodóvar lies in succumbing to the absurdity of Hollywood romanticism, while recognizing it as an impossible ideal. After enduring bloodless Oscar-winners and critically correct masterpieces, the audience rushes to Almodóvar's movies because they act like a tonic.
—José Arroyo, updated by Robert J. Pardi
Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodovar
Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar (born 1949) was a leader of New Spanish Cinema in the post-Franco era. Known for films such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Almodovar was praised for his insightful depiction of women. After a creative downturn in the 1990s, a mature Almodo var emerged at the end of the decade and into the 2000s, with films like All About My Mother.
Almodovar was born on September 25, 1949 (some sources say 1951), in Calzada de Calatrava, La Mancha, Spain. This is a small village in a remote part of Spain. Almodovar moved with his family to Extremadura, Spain, when he was eight. There, his father ran a local gas station and made wine at home. The family included his mother, Francisca Caballero, two sisters, and one brother.
Almodovar showed promise as a writer from an early age. When he was about ten years old, he won a prize for an essay he wrote about the immaculate conception. Almodovar had a very intensely Roman Catholic upbringing, which he wanted to escape.
Moved to Madrid
The day after Almodovar finished high school in 1968, he moved to Madrid, Spain. Because could not afford college, he supported himself by holding a number of odd jobs. He sold books and made jewelry. Eventually, he found a real job to support himself. From 1970 to 1981, Almodovar was employed by the national phone company, first as a clerk then as an administrator. Though he really did not fit in, he needed the steady income.
While Almodovar had a number of legitimate jobs, he also had a creative side. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he wrote comic strips and articles for underground publications such as Star, Vibora, and Vibraciones. In the 1970s, he contributed to other newspapers like El Pais, Diario 16, and La Luna. For La Luna, Almodovar had a cartoon character Patti Diphusa that he did under a pseudonym. He also wrote a soft-porn novel and some X-rated comics.
Within a few years, Almodovar moved into arts and theater. He joined an avant garde theatre group, Los Golidardos, and did some acting. There he met actors and actresses who would later be stars in his films, such as Carmen Maura and Antonio Banderas.
Made Early Movies
From about 1974 through 1978, Almodovar began to experiment with films, making super-8 shorts. In 1978, he made a feature length movie in super-8, F—, F—, F—me, Tim. Later that year, he made his first feature in 16mm format, Salome.
In 1980, Almodovar made his first feature film that received commercial release. Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap was filmed on 16mm that was blown up to 35mm for release. It was funded by friends and made for about $60,000. The story focused on women from northern Spain who were in the big city. As with many of his most popular films, Pepi, Luci, Bom featured a colorful style and many characters that lived on the fringes of society.
Emerged as Leader of New Spanish Cinema
In the early 1980s, Almodovar began making low budget feature films that were supported by government funds and other producers' money. In 1981, he directed his first feature, Labyrinth of Passion, for which he also he also composed and performed the score. This complex movie about love was Almodovar's first starring Banderas, who would become a film star in America in the 1990s.
Almodovar began getting some early international notice with his third feature, Dark Habits (1983). This was his first feature that was popular outside of Spain. The plot attacked the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church in black comic fashion. The story focused on nuns who put on fake miracles to fund their cocaine and heroin habits.
In 1984, Almodovar had his first international hit, What Have I Done to Deserve This? This was another black comedy/satire-type movie about a dysfunctional family. Slightly based on his own past, the story had such characters and plot strands as a cleaning woman with an addition to speed and a Madrid housewife who sells her son to a homosexual dentist. The housewife also kills her husband and makes soup with his remains that she serves to the police.
As Almodovar continued to make such films, he was recognized as the leader of New Spanish Cinema and the head of La Movida (The Movement), the post-Franco Spanish pop culture scene. General Francisco Franco had been the fascist dictator of Spain for three and a half decades before his death in 1975. While much of Almodovar's work was a reaction against the repressive culture of Franco, he ignored the dictator's existence in his films. Almodovar had been influenced by American directors like Billy Wilde and Preston Sturges, who had done irreverent comedies decades earlier.
Though Almodovar was gay, he did not think of himself as a gay filmmaker. Many of his films concerned universal passions and concerns and featured women at their center. He was often praised for his insightful depiction of women. While Almodovar used a narrative structure that appealed to American audiences, his films were permissive and irreverent, international and democratic. They had mainstream appeal, despite their sometimes disturbing use of satire.
In 1985, Almodovar formed his first production company, El Deseo, with brother Agustin. The following year he directed Matador, which had at its center two characters for whom killing equals sex. Retired bullfighting star Diego and Maria, a lawyer, are linked because of their shared desire. This film bucks many conventions and showed how Almodovar's movies are full of interesting details.
Almodovar directed his first big budget film in 1987, Law of Desire. This marked the first time Almodovar produced his own movie, which he would do many times in the future, but the film still received much state money. Law of Desire was a love story with a triangle of homosexual and transsexual love at its center, again starring Banderas. Almodovar was criticized for depicting unprotected gay sex in the movie.
Had American Hit with Women on the Verge
One of biggest hits of Almodovar's career came in 1988 with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Starring Maura and Banderas, the farce was more conservative than his previous movies but attracted a wider audience. The plot focused on the lives of out-of-control, lonely, abandoned women in a 48-hour period. Maura played Pepa, a self-important soap opera star who is dumped by her lover via answering machine. Interesting consequences come into play after she tries and fails to kill herself. The film was inspired by the one-person play The Human Voice by Jean Cocteau.
Women on the Verge was the highest grossing film in Spain in 1988 and one of the best successes in Spanish box office history. The feminist film was also the highest grossing foreign film in the United States in 1989. In the United States, it did $7 million in ticket sales and was nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign film. American critics like Vincent Canby of the New York Times praised the film. He wrote, "In Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Mr. Almodovar sets out to charm rather than shock. That he succeeds should not come as a surprise. The common denominator of all Almodovar films, even the one that winds up in an ecstatic murder-suicide pact, is their great good humor."
Almodovar was less conservative on his follow-up to Women on the Verge, 1990's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! The plot focused on the kidnapping of a woman, a porn and horror flick actress named Marina. She is taken by Ricki, a recently released mental patient who was obsessed with her and wants her to fall in love with him. Marina is also admired by the director of her films. Tie Me Up! becomes a love story as Marina does fall for Ricki.
Tie Me Up! was rated X in the United States. Critics were also not as kind, with many regarding it as inferior to Women on the Verge. Despite this potential problem, the film attracted $4 million in box office in the United States.
In the early 1990s, Almodovar made two wacky movies that did not do nearly as well at the box office. In 1991, he did High Heels, a comic melodrama which was not particularly successful. More filmgoers were offended by Kika (1993), which featured characters dying for love. The title character was a woman who never changes her loving attitude no matter what happens to her. Some audiences were offended by a rape scene that was played for laughs. Critics were not positive in their reviews. Shawn Levy wrote in Film Comment, " Kika is so filled with coincidences, contrivances, and unforeseeable interlockings that it feels like an entire season's worth of a primetime soap opera played in two hours on a bullet train… ."
Up to this time, Almodovar's movies had been very comic in nature. But in 1995, he created The Flowers of My Secret, which seriously addressed the idea of self-revelation. While the story focused on women, specifically a romance writer whose marriage is failing, it is much less comic. The writer can no longer write romances, so she starts writing under her own name. The film grossed about $1 million in the United States.
Addressed Franco Regime
With his next major film, Almodovar achieved several firsts in his career. Live Flesh (1998) was loosely based on the novel of the same name by Ruth Rendell. This was the first time Almodovar did a film based on another's material. He also addressed the issue of Franco which had previously been taboo for him.
Live Flesh was a crime drama with elements of noir. It was not as stylized as his previous features but still had violent love, a common element of his movies. The story focused on five people linked by a murder and how it affected their lives over a number of years. Live Flesh played well in Spain, in part because it was topical about the potential of the current government.
Won Awards with All About My Mother
Almodovar retained his serious attitude for his next movie, All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre; 1999). This was the first film in what many critics considered the mature Almodovar era. The film was a melodrama, with comedic elements, about a nurse named Manuela. Her teenage son Estaban dies when he is hit by a car, and she searches for his father, a transvestite. Her desperation and life changes form the core of the story. All About My Mother won more awards than any other of Almodovar's films, including the director's prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the best foreign language film at the Academy Awards.
The mature Almodovar continued to push his boundaries. In 2002, he wrote and directed Talk to Her (Hable Con Ella), a romantic comedy. The film was set in a hospital where two women were in a coma: Lydia, a bullfighter, and Alicia, a dancer. Both have male caretakers who become friends. For the first time in one of his films, the primary characters were men. This film received much critical praise and was nominated for a British Academy Award for best original screenplay. Almodovar was nominated for an Academy Award for best director for Talk to Her and his screenplay for the film was nominated for the writing (original screenplay) Academy Award. Almodovar walked away from the 2003 Academy Awards with the Oscar for writing (original screenplay) for Talk to Her.
As a filmmaker, Almodovar retained his own unique vision of Spanish life and the kind of characters he chose to depict, but grew past his own limits. He told Time International in 1999, "I've been making movies for the past 20 years—and, really, the same kind of movie. Sometimes I was accused of being scandalously modern, sometimes an opportunist. But now critics have realized that whatever it is I do, it is authentic. They see how close I feel to the characters in the margin. Characters at the margin of life are at the center of my movies."
Books
Pendergast, Tom, and Sara Pendergrast, eds., International Dictionary of Films and Filmakers-2: Directors, St. James Press, 2000.
Periodicals
Associated Press, November 20, 2002.
Boston Globe, December 18, 1988; February 24, 1989; December 25, 2002.
Daily Telegraph, August 17, 2002; August 23, 2002.
Economist, April 1, 2000.
Film Comment, May-June 1994.
Financial Times, August 10, 2002.
Houston Chronicle, December 29, 2002.
New York Times, September 16, 1988; September 18, 1988;September 23, 1988; February 11, 1990; April 22, 1990; January 18, 1998.
Newsweek International, May 31, 1999.
Seattle Times, December 27, 2002.
Time, January 30, 1989.
Time International, December 13, 1999.
Toronto Star, January 18, 1989.
Variety, April 20, 1998.
Online
"75th Annual Academy Awards," Oscar.com, http://www.oscar.com (March 24, 2003). □