Discrete Charm of Another Spaniard: Pedro Almodóvar Retrospective in IFFK 2007

Pedro Almodóvar in all probability would be the biggest crowd puller of this year’s IFFK. Not just because he is widely regarded as a master film maker from Spain after Louis Bunuel, who is an all-time favorite in IFFKs. Judging by the reaction of people towards his film Volver last year, Almodóvar retrospective should receive a welcome like the one a Rajanikanth film gets in Chennai. Last year, Volver created such a buzz among the festival crowd that the theatre was jam-packed at least 15 minutes before the commencement of the show. But to the disappointment of the restless crowd, the film could not be shown because of some technical problems of its sound track. (Later it was learnt that the problem was not actually with the sound track, but with the projecting equipment in the theatre. The sound track was embedded in some advanced technology that the projector in the theatre could not reproduce it.) Anyway, sound track had always been a matter of innovation for Almodóvar. In his initial films as an amateur, he could not find enough money to develop sound for the movies, which he shot using a Super-8 camera. So he would bring a tape recorder and play a cassette, in which all the dialogues and music are stored, when the movie was going on the screen. Later after his metamorphosis into a cult figure among art-house film audience he was hailed for his use of popular music in the films.

Born in a remote village in Spain in 1949, Almodóvar was attracted to films while he was studying in a religious school in a nearby town. Soon he went to Madrid, where he worked as a clerk in a telephone company in the day time and tried his hand in film-making in the evenings. The almost anarchic cultural atmosphere of Madrid immediately after the end of Franco regime was ideal for his iconoclastic film-making endeavors. But his amateur films were known more for the pornographic content than the stylistic narrative (One of his earlier works was Folle, folle, fólleme, Tim or, in English, Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Tim). He made his first full-length movie, Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap, which was a disaster both technically and financially, in 1980. Later he remarked about the film: “[It] is a film full of defects. When a film has only one or two, it is considered an imperfect film, while when there is a profusion of technical flaws, it is called style.” But soon he came out with other films such as Labyrinth of Passions, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and All About My Mother in the next two decades to establish himself as a supreme creator of anarchic, complex, yet disturbingly powerful movies.

An interesting paradox about Almodóvar is that while he has been accused of bowing to the Hollywood pressure in some quarters, he is revered in most of the film festivals that show parallel films. Recently, his left-leaning political stance and his criticism of US invasion of Iraq have made him the darling of the left and an object of hatred for the rightwing. Coming back to films, most of his films have a complex narrative, studded with abstract symbolism and dry humor. So those seeking beautiful films with an easy-flowing storyline, look elsewhere. This is art for art’s sake.

The synopsis of his films included in the retrospective is given below (Sources: Sony pictures, IMDB, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/, wikipedia).

1. Dark habits (116 min, 1983)

Unconventional Spanish comedy set in wild-and-crazy convent. Over-the-top sex-and-drugs subject matter, uneven pace will deter many viewers, but fans of director Almodóvar's bitchy yet good-natured surrealism will still enjoy. This is Almodóvar’s first film to have a proper producer and be made for a proper film company, rather than be made on the hoof like his previous projects. Almodóvar has since distanced himself from the film as he felt that he had to bow to commercial considerations.

2. All about my mother (101 min, 1999)

A single mother in Madrid sees her only son die on his 17th birthday as he runs to seek an actress's autograph. She goes to Barcelona to find the lad's father, a transvestite named Lola who does not know he has a child. First she finds her friend, Agrado, also a transvestite; through him she meets Rosa, a young nun bound for El Salvador, and by happenstance, becomes the personal assistant of Huma Rojo, the actress her son admired. She helps Huma manage Nina, the co-star and Huma's lover, and she becomes Rosa's caretaker during a dicey pregnancy. With echoes of Lorca, "All About Eve," and "Streetcar Named Desire," the mothers (and fathers and actors) live out grief, love, and friendship.

3. Kika (114 min, 1993)

Almodóvar spins out enough frenetic material for four normal movies in this penetrating satire. Peter Coyote costars as Nicholas, an American writer living in Spain whose wife has killed herself, and whose stepson, Ramon (Alex Casanova), is obsessive and narcoleptic. Ramon's ex-girlfriend, Andrea "Scarface" Garacortada is a TV show host for a program that could be called "Spain's Most Violent Home Videos." Played by Spanish star Victoria Abril, Andrea is seductive, manipulative, and will stop at nothing to get a story, spending most of the movie with a camera strapped to the top of her head. Then there is Kika (Verónica Forqué), a flighty make-up artist in love with Nicholas but engaged to Ramon. When the sexually superhuman brother of Kika’s lesbian maid (Rossy De Palma) rapes Kika in a very bizarre scene, this somehow causes all the links to come together, as the footage of the rape ends up on Andrea's show, and sinister secrets come out from all directions. With topics ranging from motherhoood to serial killers, this is a sexy, insane work from the great Almodóvar and deserves discovery by brave-hearted American audiences.

4. Talk to her (112 min, 2002)

The film revolves around two men who become friends while taking care of the comatose women they love. Their lives flow in all directions, past, present and future, pulling them towards an unsuspected destiny. Combining elements of modern dance and silent filmmaking with a narrative that embraces coincidence and fate, Almodóvar plots the lives of his characters, thrown together by unimaginably bad luck, towards an unexpected conclusion. The film was hailed by critics and embraced by arthouse audiences. Almodóvar won numerous honors across the world for his film, including a French César for Best Film and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

5. Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (90 min, 1988)

The film, staged as a faux adaptation of a theatrical work, details a two-day period in the life of Pepa, a professional movie dubber who has been abruptly abandoned by her married lover and who frantically tries to track him down. In the course of her search she discovers some of his secrets, and realizes her true feelings. This light comedy of rapid-fire dialogue and fast-paced action remains one of Almodóvar’s most accessible films (with no drugs or sex). The film received public and critical acclaim worldwide, and brought Almodóvar to the attention of American audiences.

6. Flowers of my secret (103 min, 1995)

Flowers of my secret is the story of Leo Macias, a successful romance writer who has to confront both a professional and personal crisis. Estranged from her husband, a military officer who has volunteered for an international peacekeeping role in Bosnia to avoid her, Leo fights to hold on to a past that has already eluded her, not realizing she has already set her future path by her own creativity and by supporting the creative efforts of others. This psychological drama was hailed as Almodóvar's most mature film to date, and remains one of the director's humblest films. Leaving Almodóvar's usual choral exercises aside, the story centered on the love-torn writer.

7. To return (Volver) (121 min, 2006)

This film is set in part in La Mancha (the director’s native region). The film opens showing dozens of women furiously scrubbing the graves of their deceased, establishing the influence of the dead over the living as a key theme. The plot follows the story of three generations of women in the same family who survive wind, fire, and even death. The film is an ode to female resilience, where men are literally disposable. Many of Almodóvar's stylistic hallmarks are present: the stand-alone song (a redemption of the tango song "Volver”), references to reality TV.

8. Bad education (106 min, 2004)

Two children, Ignacio and Enrique, discover love, cinema and fear in a religious school at the start of the 1960s. Father Manolo, the school principal and their literature teacher, is witness to and part of these discoveries. The three characters meet twice again. Almodóvar used elements of film noir, borrowing in particular from Double Indemnity. The film's protagonist, Juan, is a criminal without scruples, but with an adorable face that betrays nothing of his true nature. Almodóvar explains : " He also represents a classic film noir character - the femme fatale. Which means that when other characters come into contact with him, he embodies fate, in the most tragic and noir sense of the word."

9. Live flesh (1997)

Almodóvar has written all of his films, but with Live Flesh the director shared script writing credits. This was his first--and so far only--script adapted from a book, Ruth Rendell’s novel of the same name. All that remains in the film from the book is the plot line of the two male protagonists: David, a police detective, and Víctor, the man accused of wounding and paralyzing him. Upon his release, Víctor, looking for revenge, is soon entangled in the lives not only of David and his wife, but also of David’s former partner, Sancho, and Sancho’s wife. Live Flesh explores love, loss, and suffering with a sober restraint only briefly glimpsed in the director's earlier work. The film tells the story of several characters implicated in each other's fates in ways that are beyond their control.

10. High heels (112 min, 1991)

The family melodrama is built around the fractured relationship between a self-involved mother, a famous torch song singer, and the grown daughter she abandoned as a child, who works as TV newscaster. The daughter has married her mother's ex-lover and has befriended a female impersonator of her mother. Popular songs, always a key element in Almodóvar’s work, are never more present than in this film full of boleros. High Heels also contains an unexpected prison yard dance sequence.

11. Labyrinth of passion (100 min, 1982)

It is a screwball comedy about multiple identities, one of Almodóvar’s favorite subjects. The plot follows the adventures of two sex-crazy characters: Sexilia, an aptly named nymphomaniac, and Riza, the gay son of the leader of a fictional Middle Eastern country, who are meant to be together. The campy roundelay also involves Queti, Sexilia’s “biggest fan,” whose delusional father rapes her. The film caught the spirit of liberation which then ruled in Madrid and it became a cult film. Almodóvar said about the movie: " I like the film even if it could have been better made. The main problem is that the story of the two leads is much less interesting than the stories of all the secondary characters. But precisely because there are so many secondary characters, there's a lot in the film I like.”

12. What have I done to deserve this (101 min, 1984)

This film was inspired by the Spanish black comedies of the late 50s and early 60s. It is the tale of a struggling housewife and her dysfunctional family: her abusive husband, who works as a taxi driver; her oldest son, a heroin dealer; the youngest son, a hustler; and the grandmother who hates the city and just wants to return to her rural village. The theme of the downtrodden housewife coping with the travails of everyday life arises repeatedly in the director's work, as do other issues of female independence and solidarity. The film is also a critique on consumerism and patriarchal culture. In one scene, the housewife trades her own son so she doesn't have to pay a dentist bill, and in another the only witness of a crime is a lizard, aptly named “Money”.

13. Law of desire (102 min, 1986)

The film has an operatically tragic plot line and is one of Almodóvar’s richest and most disturbing movies. The narrative follows three main characters: a gay film director who embarks on a new project; his sister, an actress who used to be his brother (played by Carmen Maura), and a repressed murderously obsessive stalker (played by Antonio Banderas). The film presents a gay love triangle and drew away from most representations of homosexuals in films. These characters are neither coming out nor confront sexual guilt or homophobia; they are already liberated, like the homosexuals in Fassbinder’s films. Almodóvar said about Law of Desire : " It's the key film in my life and career. It deals with my vision of desire, something that's both very hard and very human. By this I mean the absolute necessity of being desired and the fact that in the interplay of desires it's rare that two desires meet and correspond."