The Fine Print Copyright © 2014 - 2016 Chenmiao Liang All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission. Designed, complied, and written by Chenmiao Liang in San Francisco, CA. For the source GR 612 Integrated Communications Course taught by Christopher Morlan For the film festival “Fearless Petals” to celebrate the work of Pedro Almodovar Printed in Spring 2015 mia.liang.gr@gmail.com AAU ID 03444916
Shattered Lives Rebloom in the Films of Pedro Almodovar
CATALOG
C
T ON
S T EN
03
CHAPTER 01 THE FESTIVAL
04
WELCOME
05
INTRODUCTION
06
SCHEDULE
03
CHAPTER 02 SPANISH CULTURE
04
SPANISH CULTURE
05
SPANISH FILM
03
36
CHAPTER 03 PEDRO ALMODOVAR
CHAPTER 04 FEATURED FILMS
39
WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
04
BIOGRAPHY
41
ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER
05
INTERVIEW
47
TALK TO HER
53
VOLVER
59
THE SKIN I LIVE IN
65
CHAPTER 05 LOCATION
69
THE CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER
71
NEARBY
1
FE PE AR TA L E LS SS
E M O W E LC
FEARLESS PETALS
These are some big stories in some small lives, filled with the craziness of the ordinary. The flower-like women, or even men, suffered from the loss of love, trust, or their own identities, which shatters their lives. However, it is not the end of our stories, it is the beginning. Those people hold on to their small hopes, fight back, and make their broken lives beautiful and colorful like summer flowers. You may have nothing like these stories, but you are the main character of your daily life. No matter what you are facing, or faced, you are much stronger than you think, just like our characters.
9
Fearless Petals is a Pedro Almodovar film festival held in San Francisco Bay Area to bring back his old movies and introduce his new film Silencio (2016). Pedro Almodóvar is a Spanish Oscar-winning director and screenwriter known for films like All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Bad Education, Volver and I’m So Excited. His movies bring the vivid Spanish culture to audiences, showing the delicate and passionate nature of those movie characters. The festival will take place at the Smith Rafael Film Center, which has a history of showcasing Latin American and Spanish cinema.
FEARLESS PETALS 11
INTRODU
CTION
SCH
EDU
LE
Mar 18, Friday 17:30—20:00
The Opening Party: A Flamenco Show
20:00—22:00
All About My Mother
22:00—Midnight
The Skin I Live In
Mar 19, Saturday 10:00—12:00
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
14:00—16:00
Appearance by Pedro Almodovar, along with Penélope Cruz, Julieta Serrano, Rossy de Palma
17:00—19:00
The Skin I Live In
19:30—21:30
Volver
22:00—Midnight
Talk to Her
Mar 20, Sunday 10:00—12:00
Volver
13:00—15:00
Talk to Her
16:00—18:00
All About My Mother
FEARLESS PETALS 13
19:00—21:00
The Closing Party: live concert of music from Pedro Almodovar film soundtracks
2
SP CU AN LT I S H UR E
Roman ruins of Merida and Tarragona, the decorative Lonja in Seville, Mudéjar buildings, Gothic cathedrals, castles, fantastic modernist monuments and Gaudí’s intricate fabulist sculptures in Barcelona. They are all representative of the culture of Spain. Another example of culture in Spain is the invention Spanish culture is widely known for Flamenco music and dance, bullfights, fantastic beaches and lots of sunshine. But what is Spain known for? It has much more to offer than that. It is—and has been for thou-
of the Spanish guitar, which was invented in Andalusia in the 1790’s when a sixth string was added to the Moorish lute. It gained its modern shape in the 1870’s. Spanish musicians have taken the humble guitar to
sands of years, one of the cultural centers of Europe.
dizzying heights of virtuosity and none more so than
Spain has an extraordinary artistic heritage. The domi-
cal guitar as a genre. Flamenco, music rooted in the
nant figures of the Golden Age were the Toledo-based artists El Greco and Diego Velázquez. Francisco de Goya emerged in the 18th century as Spain’s most prolific painter and he produced some wonderfully unflattering portraits of royalty. The art world in the early 20th century was influenced by a remarkable group of Spanish artists: Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí, ambassadors of the artistic culture in Spain. Spain’s architecture ranges from prehistoric monuments in Minorca in the Balearic Islands, to the
Andrés Segovia (1893-1997), who established classicante jondo (deep song) of the gitanos (gypsies) of Andalusia, is experiencing a revival. Paco de Lucia is the best known flamenco guitarist internationally. His friend Camarón de la Isla was, until his death in 1992, the leading light of contemporary cante jondo. In the 1980s flamenco-rock fusion (a.k.a. “gypsy rock”) was developed by the likes of Pata Negra and Ketama, and in the 1990s Radio Tarifa emerged with a mesmerizing mix of flamenco and medieval sounds. Bakalao, the Spanish contribution to the world of techno, emerged from Valencia.
SPANISH CULTURE 17
17
H S I N A P S E R U T L U C
H S I N A SP M L FI
The art of motion picture making within the nation of
Today, only 10 to 20% of box office receipts in Spain
Spain or by Spanish filmmakers abroad is collectively
are generated by domestic films, a situation that
known as “Spanish cinema”.
repeats itself in many nations of Europe and the
In recent years, Spanish cinema has achieved high marks of recognition as a result of its creative and technical excellence. In the long history of Spanish cinema, the great filmmaker Luis Buñuel was the first to achieve universal recognition, followed by Pedro Almodóvar in the 1980s. Spanish cinema has also seen international success over the years with films by directors like Segundo de Chomón, Florián Rey, Luis García Berlanga, Carlos Saura, Julio Medem and
Americas. The Spanish government has therefore implemented various measures aimed at supporting local film production and movie theaters, which include the assurance of funding from the main national television stations. The trend is being reversed with the screenings of mega productions such as the €30 million film Alatriste, the Academy Award winning Spanish/Mexican film Pan’s Labyrinth, Volver, and Los Borgia, all of them hit blockbusters in Spain.
Alejandro Amenábar. Woody Allen, upon receiving
Another aspect of Spanish cinema mostly unknown
the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award in 2002 in
to the general public is the appearance of English-
Oviedo remarked: “When I left New York, the most
language Spanish films such as The Machinist, The
exciting film in the city at the time was Spanish, Pedro
Others, Basic Instinct 2, and Miloš Forman’s Goya’s
Almodóvar’s one. I hope that Europeans will continue
Ghosts. All of these films were produced by Spanish
to lead the way in filmmaking because at the moment
firms. This attests to the dynamism and creativity of
not much is coming from the United States.”
Spanish directors and producers.
Non-directors have obtained less international notability. Only the cinematographer Néstor Almendros, the actress Penélope Cruz and the actors Fernando Rey, Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem and Fernando Fernán Gómez have obtained some recognition outside of Spain. Mexican actor Gael García Bernal has also recently received international notoriety in films by Spanish directors.
SPANISH CULTURE 19
PE AL DR M O OD O
3 VA
R
BIO
GR
AP
HY
Pedro Almodóvar is an internationally recognized filmmaker who’s directed more than a dozen movies, some of which have been controversial. After the hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Almodóvar won Academy Awards for All About My Mother and Talk to Her. His more recent films include Volver, Broken Embraces and I’m So Excited.
Background Almodóvar was born on September 25, 1949, in Calzada de Calatrava, a hamlet of La Mancha, Spain. His father was an oil and wine trader who did a variety of additional jobs and his mother, whom he was closer to, earned money by writing letters for neighbors who couldn’t read or write. Almodóvar attended a Catholic boarding school for a time and decided to move to Madrid by the end of the 1960s, going against his father’s directive that he work at a bank. Almodóvar had developed a love for movies and
PEDRO ALMODOVAR
watched an assortment of international directors. He
23
worked at phone company Telefonica while making short films with a Super-8 camera and honing his craft as a writer of short stories and satirical media. After the death of Spain’s dictator, Francisco Franco, in 1975, the citizenry experienced newfound freedom which could be found in the movida madrileña movement, a countercultural wave in which Almodóvar is seen as an icon with his erotic, irreverent work.
First Films and Antonio Banderas
Controversy and Oscar Wins
Having previously created a Super-8 feature-length
Almodóvar provoked major outcries over his next
work, Almodóvar’s first commercial film was the
feature Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, with its plot of an
madcap Pepi, Luci, Bom y Otras Chicas del Montón
actress being held captive by and falling for a mentally
(1980), adapted from a story he wrote for a fan-
unhinged man, and the MPAA also giving the film an
zine. It was followed by 1982’s Labyrinth of Passion,
X rating for its sex scenes. The director followed up
which marked actor Antonio Banderas’s film debut.
with High Heels (1991) and Kika (1993), which was
Banderas went on to collaborate with Almodóvar in
controversial as well over its treatment of women.
several more features over the next decade, including Laws of Desire (1987), Banderas’s first lead role with the director.
Yet 1995’s Flower of My Secret showed the director in a more subdued and serious light (though humor still came through): The story focused on a pseudonymous
Almodóvar continued his explorations of the flesh
romance writer who suffers over a dead marriage while
with What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984),
finding a stronger sense of self.
Dark Habits (1984), Matador (1986) and the aforementioned Desire before his big international breakthrough, the comedy Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988). The madcap, apartment-based farce, focusing on the interconnected lives of a female cast and their lovers, was Spain’s top grossing film for several years and was nominated for a foreign film Academy Award. The movie was later turned into a 2010 Broadway musical.
Live Flesh was released in 1998 and featured Penelope Cruz in her first film with the director, while Almodóvar’s next work, All About My Mother, featured Cruz again along with actress Cecilia Roth portraying a woman who has lost her son and seeks
out his father, who is a transvestite. The acclaimed, riveting work saw Almodóvar win an Academy Award for best foreign language film, with an emotional Banderas and Cruz presenting the award to him at the live telecast. Almodóvar received another Oscar, this time for screenwriting, with 2002’s Talk to Her, which told the story of two women—a dancer and a bullfighter who both lie comatose in a hospital—and the two men who visit them. The filmmaker’s next work, the noir-ish Bad Education (2004), starring Gael García Bernal and Fele Martínez, told the story of two boys who attended a Catholic boarding school together and their reunion as adults, though all isn’t as it seems.
PEDRO ALMODOVAR 25
INTE
RVIE
W
Pedro Almodóvar Talks About Spanish Cinema He Loves at the 2014 Lumière Festival in Lyon
“Without cinema, we are nothing,” says Pedro Almodóvar, in a quote used for the intro clip to the Lumière Festival. Anyone who has seen an Almodóvar film will sense how deeply he is influenced by movies that went before him, a passion of youth transformed into a source of inspiration and sentiment in maturity. For his Lumière Award, like Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino before him, Almodóvar chose some of his Spanish favorites, which he has channeled in his own films, for a Homage to Spanish Cinema. Here he talks about these films in a text written especially for the Lumière Festival. With this selection of seven films, which aims to pay homage to the Spanish cinema, I wanted to first propose works that have stood the test of time and proven their aesthetic value. I also wanted to show the Lumière Festival audiences works whose renown have scarcely reached beyond Spain’s borders. Mostly shot during the Franco dictatorship, these works – in addition to being beautiful films – knew how to ingeniously circumvent the censorship laws of the Church and State, which were as absurd as they were unforgiving. Two of the best known films outside Spain, The Executioner by Luis García Berlanga and The Spirit of the Beehive by Victor Erice, each had their own radically different but equally effective method to fool the censors. Erice’s film is a masterpiece of codes and symbolic signs. Berlanga’s is social comedy, which relates to Italian neo-realism. The censors failed to grasp the true significance of these two films. The Executioner is played by the wonderful José Isbert, who portrayed a kind of idealized Spanish grandfather in the popular comedies of the era- a charming old man, perfect in every way, attentive to his family, with
PEDRO ALMODOVAR 27
Torrent, five) are the living dead: silent, distant and closed. Ana spends her time taking care of an elusive “spirit” (a fugitive soldier) hiding in an abandoned livestock shed. One day, the spirit disappears, shot by the Civil Guard. The questioning look of the child, the innocence and recklessness in Ana Torrent’s eyes, speak louder than any other image on the uncertainty of the times and the thirst for knowledge and awareonly one requirement of his son in-law, to work and
ness we had in 1973 (the year of the film)…We began
feed his daughter and grand-son. Everyone can relate
to realize that the country in which we lived was not
to that. Mystified by the sympathy the film received,
the one we were told about at school or at home.
the censors failed to see it was a condemnation of the death penalty. Spain was then a totalitarian regime and the film directly accused the state – which continued to muzzle the convicted – of criminal conduct. The officials involved in censorship had been fooled and had completely missed the point of its true narrative. In civilized countries, “The Executioner” was considered a masterpiece. In the Spain of 1963, its value was even greater; those in power had “discovered” the film at the Venice Film Festival where it won the FIPRESCI Critics’ Prize. Then the censorship the film had previously eluded had to be faced upon its return to Spain. But that’s another story, one that Rafael Azcona and Luis García Berlanga could have invented themselves, had they not actually lived it.
“Poachers” (“Furtivos,” 1975) by José Luis Borau, is chronologically the last film of this carte blanche to have been made during the Franco era. A highly audacious film for its time, it seems in retrospect that if the author was free to tell this brutal tale, it was only because the Franco regime and censorship were coming to an end. But in 1974, the year the picture was filmed, no one was aware of this. And it would be another three years before the country could benefit from the work of José Luis Borau and his co-scriptwriter Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, thankful for the freedom they had to produce such a sharp, precise script. The film is a “Goyaesque” fresco where the action takes place in a forest, a microcosm of a crystallizing Spanish society. One can see the forest
“The Spirit of the Beehive,” by Victor Erice is on the
as a symbolic representation of society or consider
opposite spectrum from “The Executioner.” The film
the character of Martina, the mother – an abusive,
is a lyrical tale that takes on the appearance of a chil-
immoral, hypocritical, incestuous and murderous
dren’s story, in which the movie “Frankenstein” by
woman – as a metaphor for the country.
James Whale awakens the curiosity of a little girl. She lives in an environment of death and ghosts haunting a village in 1941, a year after Franco had announced the end of the Spanish Civil War. Unfortunately, it was a year full of ghosts. The film is nearly silent, leaving the adult characters to both internalize and incarnate censorship. The parents of the girl (played by Ana
“Poachers” is a film that combines two genres rarely tackled by the Spanish cinema: the Western and the film noir. The authors pay explicit homage to Luis Buñuel by choosing the actress Lola Gaos to play the mother. The husky-voiced actress with the unattractive physique was directed by the Aragonese genius in
flamenco singing and dancing. The participation of two popular figures of flamenco at the top of their careers, the singer Manolo Caracol and flamenco dancer Lola Flores, also a singer and actress, is a phenomenon in itself. These two legends help us understand the unfathomable mystery that is the art of flamenco. The film was reviled upon its release; critics could not accept that the time and space of the narrative “Viridiana” and “Tristana” where she played Saturna, the maid to young Tristana (Catherine Deneuve). As the director himself acknowledged, the name Saturna was a metaphorical key to the character of Martina for Poachers, an allusion to Goya’s “Saturn devouring one of his sons.” “Rapture” (“Arrebato”) by Ivan Zulueta, though shot in 1979, just four years later, seems to take place in a totally different Spain. The story is deliberately apolitical and the context is a cosmopolitan Madrid at the beginning of the Movida. The main character is a director of horror films, mysteriously “engulfed” by his super 8 camera. The film is a horrific fantasy tale of “self-immolation” whose true subjects are heroin and filming, with darkness proposed as the only way to
deviated from convention. The flamenco song and dance that mattered to the director were like two sides of a mysterious coin. The enchantment to which the title alludes [Embrujo: bewitchment, enchantment ] refers to the spell and mystery of flamenco, depicted through cathartic and expressionist images, far removed from the norms of Spanish folk cinema. Even today, “Embrujo” remains a very modern film. Another “cursed” masterpiece is “Strange Voyage” (“El extraño viaje”) by Fernando Fernán Gómez, even though the censors hardly knew how to justify their sanctions. In 1964, when the country embarked on a wave of modernization and development, tourism was seen as one of the great hopes on which to base our economy. However, showing the image of
self-discovery and personal growth. In just four years, the new Spain was as different from the former years as are the characters in “Rapture” and “Poachers.” Over time, the film by Zulueta has become a kind of modern classic, although it remains a work apart in the film industry and for the Spanish public. This is not the only singular film on the list. “Embrujo” by Carlos Serrano de Osma (1948) is another condemned film, despite its seemingly harmless theme of
PEDRO ALMODOVAR 29
a Spanish beach with the bodies of two fat, ugly and drunk brothers was not the best way to promote the beauty of our shores! Seven years after its completion the film was finally released, and only as part of a double feature. Since then, it has continued to win over admirers. Fernando Fernán Gómez was a true Renaissance man: actor, director, novelist, playwright; he was good at all disciplines. “Strange Voyage” was based on the real story, still unsolved, of the murder of two brothers in a small port on the coast. Unlike other films shot in rural areas, the work of Fernán Gómez is full of black humor. This is an example of the particularity of Spanish neo-realism, where Italian sentimentality is less prevalent and where the narrative naturally incorporates the grotesque and the “surreal,” infused with an acerbic black humor. “Main Street” (“Calle Mayor,” Juan Antonio Bardem, 1956) and “Aunt Tula” (“La tia Tula,” Miguel Picazo, 1964) are counterparts to Fernán Gómez’s film. Both melodramas focus on the character of an unmarried woman. I have a weakness for films that evoke the rural and provincial life. Social prejudice and Catholic morality were particularly harsh on women. Until the age of 10, I lived surrounded by women, some of them very similar to the ones in these two films. I suppose that explains my fondness for these characters. In any case, they are both gems. “Aunt Tula” triumphed
women’s rituals of daily life at the time: the church, the family, the meetings between women. In both films, they are reduced to solitude. In the 1950s and 1960s, a woman’s loneliness was always due to the absence of a man. The fate of a woman over 30 was to stay in the kitchen, go to church, or become obese. In both films, the characters live in similar environments, but an essential point differentiates them: in “Main Street,” Isabel is a victim of the repression of the era, whereas in Aunt Tula, the protagonist is her own executioner. At the turn of the decade, far from gaining greater liberty, women were subjected to even more stringent rules. A spinster in the early 1960’s was a girl who grew up in the 1950s, denying herself physical pleasure, harboring old-fashioned ideas on
at the Festival of San Sebastian in 1964, winning
women’s chastity and dignity.
the awards for Best Spanish language film and Best
In “Main Street” and “Aunt Tula,” the stories embrace
Director. At the Venice Film Festival in 1956, Main Street won Best Picture, the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Jury prize for Best Director, and a Special Mention for Betsy Blair’s performance. In “Main Street” and “Aunt Tula,” respective protagonists Isabel and Tula comply with all the expected
the perspective of their heroines. It is also striking how, with no nudity or explicit erotic scenes, there is an intense atmosphere of lust. I do not remember any other Spanish film of the era or in the subsequent years in which carnal desire is so prevalent and so intense. For this, we must be grateful to the directors and their wonderful actresses.
PEDRO ALMODOVAR 31
4
D E R U T A FE S M FIL
1978
Folle... folle... fรณlleme Tim!
1980
Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom
1982
Labyrinth of Passion
1983
Dark Habits
1986
Matador
1987
Law of Desire
1988
4
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
1989
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
D E R U T A FE S M FIL
2002
Talk to Her
2004
Bad Education
2006
Volver
FEATURED FILMS 35
1991
High Heels
1993
Kika
1995
The Flower of My Secret
1997
Live Flesh
1999
All About My Mother
2009
Broken Embraces
2011
The Skin I Live In
2013
I’m So Excited!
2016
Silencio
WO M E N THE ON VER GE O A NE F R VO BRE U S A KD OWN
F
Synopsis The story is set in Madrid, Spain in the late 1980’s in the love nest of Pepa, an actress and Ivan, her married lover. Pepa comes home to find out that she has been dumped via the technology of the day, an answering machine. She goes on a mission searching for Ivan all over the city and that is where things get really crazy. Then there is Ivan’s wife Lucia, who has just been released from a sanatorium and is bent on making Ivan pay for his indiscretions with Pepa, as well as for sending her to the crazy house and separating her from their son. As Pepa searches all over the Spanish capitol for Ivan, she visits a feminist lawyer who she implores to help her friend Candela in her impending legal troubles, but is met with hostility, and Pepa doesn’t understand why. When she picks up the phone in the office, she believes that she hears Ivan’s voice, but writes it off to the barbiturates that she uses to spike her gazpacho. It is sadly comical how Pepa and Ivan are constantly missing each other, both in person and on the phone. She continually, however, manages to accidentally run into people who are somehow or another connected to Ivan and the entire fiasco that unfolds in her apartment. The ending ties all the subplots together and Pepa finally talks to Ivan and finds and sees the woman who replaced her as Ivan’s mistress.
FEATURED FILMS 37
by VINCENT CANBY September 23, 1988
Review It hasn’t been Pepa’s day, or even week. Ivan, her
At its best, ‘’Women on the Verge of a Nervous
longtime lover and a male-chauvinist rat, walks out
Breakdown’’ has much of the cheeringly mad intensity
on her, leaving only a bland message on her answering
of animated shorts produced in Hollywood before the
machine. Planning suicide, Pepa spikes a blenderful of
television era. This is exemplified in Carmen Maura’s
garden-fresh gazpacho with sleeping pills, but forgets
grand performance as Pepa. Miss Maura, who looks a
to drink it.
bit like Jeanne Moreau, is to Mr. Almodovar’s cinema
Pepa’s suicide quickly takes on the aspects of a dental check-up: It keeps getting sidetracked.
what Anna Magnani once was to Roberto Rossellini’s. This comparision would come to mind even if the director hadn’t said publicly that the inspiration for
Saying she really shouldn’t smoke, Pepa lights a
‘’Women on the Verge’’ was Jean Cocteau’s short,
cigarette and sets her bed ablaze. Her best friend,
one-character play ‘’The Human Voice,’’ which was
Candela, who has been having a blissful affair with a
acted by Miss Magnani in the Rossellini screen
man she didn’t realize was a Shiite terrorist, comes by
adaptation.
looking for refuge from the police.
Though Mr. Almodovar apparently adores ‘’The
The first couple to look at Pepa’s apartment,
Human Voice,’’ or did at one time, his new film is
which she has put on the market, are Carlos, Ivan’s
a fiendishly funny sendup of Cocteau’s fustian por-
grown son, whom Pepa had never known about,
trait of a desperate woman who, abandoned by her
and Marisa, Carlos’s toothy girlfriend. When Pepa
lover, uses the telephone as a blunt instrument just
seeks legal advice, the lawyer happens to be Ivan’s
by talking into it. As written and performed, Pepa
newest mistress.
is every bracing thing that the self-pitying Cocteau
These are only some of the delirious ingredients
character is not.
in this most entertaining, deliberately benign new
Miss Maura is wonderful as a woman who simply
Spanish farce, ‘’Women on the Verge of a Nervous
cannot resist fighting back. The actress has a big,
Breakdown.’’ The director is Pedro Almodovar, better
no-nonsense screen personality that perfectly fits
known here for his deliberately scandalous dark com-
Mr. Almodovar’s raffishly deadpan comic method.
edies (‘’Matador,’’ ‘’Law of Desire’’ and ‘’What Have
Watching ‘’Women on the Verge’’ while remem-
I Done to Deserve This?’’) in which anything goes,
bering ‘’The Human Voice,’’ one experiences the
provided that it may offend somebody’s sensibility.
same sense of liberation that Bob Hoskins feels
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.
when he leaves Los Angeles and enters Toontown in ‘’Who Framed Roger Rabbit.’’
‘’Women on the Verge’’ takes place in its own, very
Though feminist in its sympathies, ‘’Women on the
special farcical universe, where outrageous coinci-
Verge’’ is far from being a tract of any sort. The char-
dences are the norm and where logic dictates that
acters Mr. Almodovar has written and directed keep
a forgotten blender full of spiked gazpacho will be
asserting idiosyncrasies that do not allow them, or the
drunk by the wrong person. It’s also a place where a
film, to be so humorlessly categorized.
television anchor is a sweet old grandmother instead of a barely literate sex symbol, and where Pepa, an actress, appears in a commercial for a detergent guaranteed to get the blood out of your killer son’s shirt and trousers.
The pace sometimes flags, and there are scenes in which the comic potential appears to be lost only because the camera is in the wrong place. Farce isn’t easy to pull off, but Mr. Almodovar is well on his way to mastering this most difficult of all screen genres.
FEATURED FILMS 39
Synopsis Manuela is a single mother of Madrid, who brings her only son Esteban to a Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire for his 17th birthday. After the play, they wait outside to get the autograph of one of the actresses. He doesn’t receive it and proceeds to chase their taxi down and gets hit by a car and dies. Manuela decides to go to Barcelona to find Estebans father, a transvestite named Lola, who doesn’t know that he is a father. She finds her old friend Agrado who is also a transvestite. Manuela needs a job so Agrado brings her to Rosa, a nun, who is three months pregnant with Lola’s child, and contracted AIDS from Lola. Manuela goes to the same production of A Streetcar Named Desire and meets the actress her son was chasing after, Huma. Manuela helps take care of Rosa, and works for Huma. After Rosa has the baby, she dies from AIDS, and Lola comes back and is also dying from AIDS and meets his new son who Manuela names Esteban. Manuela heads back to Madrid the same way she did before, with a baby son.
FEATURED FILMS 41
T U O B A ALL R E H T O MY M
by ROGER EBERT December 22, 1999
Review Pedro Almodovar’s films are a struggle between real
performance of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1993)
and fake heartbreak--between tragedy and soap
and now wait across the street from the stage door so
opera. They’re usually funny, too, which increases
Esteban can get an autograph from the famous actress
the tension. You don’t know where to position your-
Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes). She jumps into a taxi
self while you’re watching a film like “All About My
(intercut with shots from “All About Eve” of Bette
Mother,” and that’s part of the appeal: Do you take it
Davis eluding an autograph hound), and Esteban runs
seriously, like the characters do, or do you notice the
after her and is struck dead in the street. That sets up
bright colors and flashy art decoration, the cheerful
the story, as Manuela journeys to Barcelona to inform
homages to Tennessee Williams and “All About Eve”
Esteban’s father of the son’s death.
(1950) and see it as a parody? Even Almodovar’s camera sometimes doesn’t know where to stand: When the heroine’s son writes in his journal, the camera looks at his pen from the point of view of the paper.
There is irony as the film folds back on itself, because its opening scenes show Manuela, now a transplant coordinator but once an actress, performing in a video intended to promote organ transplants. In the
“All About My Mother” is one of the best films of
film, grieving relatives are asked to allow the organs
the Spanish director, whose films present a Tennessee
of their loved ones to be used; later Manuela plays
Williams sensibility in the visual style of a 1950s
the same scene for real, as she’s asked to donate
Universal-International tearjerker. Rock Hudson and
her own son’s heart.
Dorothy Malone never seem very far offscreen. Bette Davis isn’t offscreen at all: Almodovar’s heroines seem to be playing her. Self-parody is part of Almodovar’s approach, but “All About My Mother” is also sincere and heartfelt; though two of its characters are transvestite hookers, one is a pregnant nun and two more are battling lesbians, this is a film that paradoxically expresses family values.
The Barcelona scenes reflect Almodovar’s long-standing interest in characters who cross the gender divide. Esteban’s father is now a transvestite prostitute. In a scene worthy of Fellini, we visit a field in Barcelona where cars circle a lineup of flamboyant hookers of all sexes, and where Manuela, seeking her former lover, finds an old friend named Agrado (Antonia San Juan). The name means “agreeable,” we’re told, and Agrado
The movie opens in Madrid with a medical worker
is a person with endless troubles of her own who nev-
named Manuela (Cecilia Roth) and her teenage
ertheless enters every scene looking for the laugh.
son Esteban (Eloy Azorin). They’ve gone to see a
In one scene, she dresses in a Chanel knockoff and is asked if it is real. As a street hooker, she couldn’t afford Chanel, but her answer is unexpected: “How could I buy a real Chanel with all the hunger in the world?” There are unexpected connections between the characters, even between Esteban’s father and Sister Rosa (Penelope Cruz), a nun who works in a shelter for battered prostitutes. And new connections
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are forged. We meet the actress Huma Rojo once again, and her girlfriend and co-star Nina (Candela Pena): “She’s hooked on junk and I’m hooked on her.” When Nina flakes out, Manuela is actually able to understudy her role, having played it years ago. And Agrado finds a job as Huma’s personal assistant. Meanwhile, the search goes on for the missing lover. Manuela is the heroine of the film and its center, but Agrado is the source of life. There’s an extraordinary scene in which she takes an empty stage against a hostile audience and tries to improvise a one-woman show around the story of her life. Finally she starts an inventory of the plastic surgeries that assisted her in the journey from male to female, describing the pain, procedure and cost of each, as if saying, “I’ve paid my dues to be who I am today. Have you?” Almodovar’s earlier films sometimes seemed to be manipulating the characters as an exercise. Here the plot does handstands in its eagerness to use coincidence, surprise and melodrama. But the characters have a weight and reality, as if Almodovar has finally taken pity on them--has seen that although their plights may seem ludicrous, they’re real enough to hurt. These are people who stand outside conventional life and its rules, and yet affirm them. Families are where you find them and how you make them, and home, it’s said, is the place where, if you have to go there, they have to take you in.
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TA
O T LK
R E H
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Synopsis The story unfolds in flashbacks, giving details of two separate relationships that become intertwined with each other. During a dance recital Benigno MartĂn and Marco Zuluaga cross paths but the two men are no more than strangers, but Benigno notices that Marco cries. After a chance encounter at a theater, Benigno and Marco, meet at a private clinic where Benigno works. Lydia, Marco’s girlfriend and a bullfighter by profession, has been gored and is in a coma. It so happens that Benigno is looking after another woman in a coma, Alicia, a young ballet student. Benigno keeps telling Marco that he should talk to Lydia, because despite the fact that they are in a coma, women understand and react to men’s problems. The lives of the four characters will flow in all directions, past, present and future, dragging all of them towards an unsuspected destiny.
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by ROGER EBERT December 25, 2002
Review A man cries in the opening scene of Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her,” but although unspeakably sad things are to happen later in the movie, these tears are shed during a theater performance. Onstage, a woman wanders as if blind or dazed, and a man scurries to move obstacles out of her way--chairs, tables. Sometimes she blunders into the wall. In the audience, we see two men who are still, at this point, strangers to each other. Marco (Dario Grandinetti) is a travel writer. Benigno (Javier Camara) is a male nurse. The tears are of empathy, and it hardly matters which man cries, because in the film, both will devote themselves to caring for helpless women. What’s important are the tears. If he had been the director of “The Searchers” instead of John Ford, Almodovar has told the writer Lorenza Munoz, John Wayne would have cried. “Talk to Her” is a film with many themes; it ranges in tone from a soap opera to a tragedy. One theme is that men can possess attributes usually described as feminine. They can devote their lives to a patient in a coma, they can live their emotional lives through someone else, they can gain deep satisfaction from bathing, tending, cleaning up, taking care. The bond that eventually unites the two men in “Talk to Her” is that they share these abilities. For much of the movie, what they have in common is that they wait by the bedsides of women who have suffered brain damage and are never expected to recover. Marco meets Lydia (Rosario Flores) when she is at the height of her fame, the most famous female matador in Spain. Driving her home one night, he learns her secret: She is fearless about bulls, but paralyzingly frightened of snakes. After Marco catches a snake in her kitchen (we are reminded of Annie Hall’s spider),
she announces she will never be able to go back into
was kind or careless. Almodovar treads a very delicate
that house again. Soon after, she is gored by a bull,
path here. He accepts the obsessions of the two men,
and lingers in the twilight of a coma. Marco, who did
and respects them, but as a director whose films have
not know her very well, paradoxically comes to know
always revealed a familiarity with the stranger pos-
her better as he attends at her bedside.
sibilities of human sexual expression, he hints, too,
Benigno has long been a nurse, and for years tended his dying mother. He first saw the ballerina Alicia (Leonor Watling) as she rehearsed in a studio across from his apartment. She is comatose after a traffic accident. He volunteers to take extra shifts and seems willing to spend 24 hours a day at her bedside. He is in love with her. As the two men meet at the hospital and share their experiences, I was reminded of Julien and Cecelia, the characters in Francois Truffaut’s film “The Green Room” (1978), based on the Henry James story “The Altar of the Dead.” Julian builds a shrine to all of his loved ones who have died, fills it with photographs and possessions, and spends all of his time there with “my dead.” When he falls in love with Cecelia, he offers her his most precious gift: He shares his dead with her. She gradually comes to understand that for him, they are more alive than she is.
that there is something a little creepy about their devotion. The startling outcome of one of the cases, which I will not reveal, sets an almost insoluble moral dilemma for us. Conventional morality requires us to disapprove of actions that in fact may have been inspired by love and hope. By Almodovar’s standards, this is an almost conventional film; certainly it doesn’t involve itself in the sexual revolving doors of many of his movies. But there is a special effects sequence of outrageous audacity, a short silent film fantasy in which a little man attempts to please a woman with what can only be described as total commitment. Almodovar has a way of evoking sincere responses from material which, if it were revolved only slightly, would present a face of sheer irony. “Talk to Her” combines improbable melodrama (gored bullfighters, comatose ballerinas) with subtly kinky bedside vigils and sensational denouements, and yet at the end, we are undeniably
That seems to be the case with Benigno, whose woman
touched. No director since Fassbinder has been able
becomes most real to him now that she is helpless and
to evoke such complex emotions with such problem-
his life is devoted to caring for her. Marco’s motivation
atic material.
is more complex, but both men seem happy to devote their lives to women who do not, and may never, know of their devotion. There is something selfless in their dedication, but something selfish, too, because what they are doing is for their own benefit; the patients would be equally unaware of treatment whether it
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VOLVER
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Synopsis Raimunda, her daughter Paula and her sister Sole travel from Madrid to the windy and superstitious village of Alcanfor de las Infantas to visit the grave of their mother Irene, who died years ago in a fire with her husband. Then they visit Irene’s sister Paula, an old senile aunt that raised Raimunda after the death of her parents, who insists on telling them that Irene is alive and living with her. Later, they go to the house of her neighbor and friend Agustina, who gives support to Paula. They return to Madrid, and after a hard day of work, Raimunda meets her daughter completely distraught at the bus stop waiting for her. When they arrive home, Paula tells her mother that she killed her unemployed father, Paco, who was completely drunk and tried to rape her. While Raimunda hides his body, Sole calls her to say that their beloved aunt Paula has died. The next morning, Sole travels alone to the funeral, and when she returns to Madrid, she finds her mother hidden in the trunk of her car. She brings Irene to her apartment, where secrets from the past are disclosed.
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The dry east wind that howls through the little village in La Mancha where Pedro Almodovar was born, and where his latest film “Volver” begins, brings with it unease, fire and insanity. In the opening shot, it blows crisp dead leaves across marble graves, while women dust and polish the stones. Sometimes, they even come by to clean their own graves. It’s just another housekeeping chore. The opening shot ends with a period -- the grave of a husband and wife who died, together, in a fire fueled by those incessant winds. But, naturally, this is the beginning of the film, so it’s not a period at all, just a by JIM EMERSON September 9, 2006
Review
semi-colon where we pause for a brief rest and then continue. “Volver” (roughly translated: “To Return”) is a magical film, but that magic is in the filmmaking -- not just the surreally supernatural events (presented with a
Nervous Breakdown” seventeen years ago, and we’re as glad to see her as ghost-welcoming daughter. Penelope Cruz, who is flat and dead herself in American movies, comes to life under Almodovar’s Spanish matter-of-factness that recalls Almodovar’s
direction, full of verve and vitality. She’s also really
great cinematic ancestor, Luis Bunuel), but in the
funny. And she sings! (The Cruz of “Volver” is more
filmmaking itself. As the first shot announces, this
woman than Tom Cruise could ever handle in his wild-
is a movie about women and death. It’s in love with
est dreams.) A pair of women in the film talk about
women, and unafraid of death, which appears as a
their addiction to “trash TV,” and how as they watch
porous membrane through which people may pass
it they just feel worse and worse. That’s what it’s been
without permanently abandoning the land of the
like watching Cruz in American movies. (Compare her
living.
work in “Open Your Eyes” with the American remake,
So a mother, dead for four years, hitches a ride in the trunk of her daughter’s car, carrying a deceased aunt’s
“Vanilla Sky.”) I get the feeling that, if she’s smart, she won’t go back.
green suitcase. When she insists her daughter unlock
Let me share a nice passage from Almodovar’s press
the trunk to let her out (because she’s decided to
notes that captures the atmosphere of the movie:
come visit for a while), nobody really bats an eyelash.
“For the first time, I think, I can look at [death] with-
After all, who wouldn’t be happy to see her mother, or
out fear, although I continue to neither understand
her daughter, after four years’ separation? The situa-
nor accept it. I’m starting to get the idea that it exists.
tion is less eerie or strange than warm and touching.
“Despite being a non-believer, I’ve tried to bring the
Men are peripheral in “Volver,” and they aren’t
character (of Carmen Maura) from the other world.
particularly missed. They scarcely matter, except
And I’ve made her talk about heaven, hell and purga-
as sources of irritation, or natural resources to be
tory. And, I’m not the first one to discover this, the
exploited (mostly off-screen) for income. Carmen
other world is here. The other world is this one. We are
Maura, as the mother, reunites with Almodovar
hell, heaven or purgatory, they are inside us. Sartre
for the first time since “Women on the Verge of a
put it better than I.”
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Synopsis In Toledo, the scientist and surgeon Dr. Robert
thug Zeca, who raped Vera, Robert has a nightmare
Ledgard is researching a synthetic skin capable of
about his daughter Norma, who was raped in a party
resisting fire and any harm after the death of his
by the youngster Vicente and committed suicide
beloved wife, who was burnt in a car accident. He is
later. Robert plots a scheme to revenge his daughter
isolated in his mansion with his maid Marilia and his
that has begun with the abduction of Vicente. What
mysterious subject Vera Cruz, who is his test subject,
is the connection between Vicente and Vera?
but is locked in her room. After the assault by the
T H E S KI N I LIVE IN
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by ROGER EBERT October 19, 2011
Review With a Pedro Almodovar film, we expect voluptuous sexual perversion, devious plot twists, a snaky interweaving of past and present, all painted on a canvas of bright colors with bold art and clothing. His latest film, “The Skin I Live In,” does not disappoint. Though I usually take pleasure in Almodovar’s sexy darkness, this film induces queasiness. What it provides is a glossy, smooth, luxurious version of the sorts of unspeakable things that occupied classified classic horror films involving mad scientists, body parts, twisted revenge, personal captives
and hidden revenge. Usually such films are stylisti-
books, a routine of yoga, around-the-clock service,
cally elevated enough that there’s an irony involved,
everything but her freedom. She is not his patient
a camp humor.
but his prisoner, and perhaps she believes there are
Although camp is not unknown to Almodovar, here he maintains an emotional intensity showing that his bizarre story must be taken seriously. Yes, there is a mad scientist: the driven, brilliant Dr. Robert Ledgard, played by Antonio Banderas with rare intensity.
only two ways to free herself: suicide, or forcing the doctor to fall in love with her. She is narcissistic enough to know how beautiful she is, and seduction is a challenge to her.
Robert is driven by his science to try to repair tears
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in his heart. To do this, he assumes he has the godlike
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right to use the bodies and minds of other people: Their sacrifices are necessary to heal his pain. As the film opens, he holds the beautiful Vera (Elena Anaya) captive in his huge mansion in the Spanish city of Toledo. She has every luxury except freedom. She is dressed from toes to chin in a flesh-colored costume that looks like a compression suit. She has a stack of
We learn pieces of the back story. Robert’s young wife was horribly burned in a car accident. His specialty has become face transplants. (“I have performed three of the nine in history, and nothing has given me more satisfaction.”) I briefly thought Vera was his wife, but no, she’s dead, and Vera was kidnapped. He watches her on closed-circuit TV like an artwork and seems intent on using plastic surgery to create an
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ideal woman who will be, to put it plainly, fireproof.
63
There’s much clinical detail involving laboratory work, cloning, the blood of living pigs and sheets of newly grown skin. Some sequences could come from a documentary. This program of surgery is embedded in a plot so devious that the audience knows more than Robert ever does — for example, the identity of his mother and his brother. That’s Almodovar for you: It makes no difference who those people are, or whether Robert knows it. Pedro is just thickening the soup. There is also a rape the nature of which Robert misunderstands. And the faithful older housekeeper Marilia (Marisa Paredes), who all mad scientists are required to have on staff. And Zeca (Roberto Alamo), a man dressed as a tiger, who comes to the house and explains to Marilia that he is a wanted man, and must be given sanctuary; only during Carnival can he move through the city disguised as a tiger. And Vicente (Jan Cornet), who Robert kidnaps for mistaken reasons and holds captive in the basement. You see how this film could have starred Vincent Price. It looks so silky. Few directors have used colors, especially red, as joyfully as Almodovar. Every scene vibrates. There is passion, but not chemistry; although we believe Vera actually does hope to seduce the doctor, his feelings for her seem psychopathic, not
sexual. He wants to prove something. The full depth of his depravity is revealed in the unexpected final sequence, when we discover that Robert’s emotional engine is fueled not by lust, jealousy or anger, but by a need to treat others as his scientific playthings. Robert is an unwholesome character. The feelings of others mean nothing to him. That he expresses them on the rich canvas of Almodovar lends them a superficial beauty, but he is rotten to the core. This film must be credited with expressing exactly what Almodovar wanted to say, but I am not sure I wanted to hear it. The three-star rating is a compromise between admiration for the craftsmanship and the acting, and disquiet about the story.
5 LO CA TI O
N
THE CHRISTOP HER B. S M I T H R AFAEL FILM CEN TER It may well be the most elegant and comfortable place on the planet to enjoy great films and see some of the world’s leading filmmakers. The Rafael is owned and operated by the California Film Institute, the non-profit arts organization that also produces the annual Mill Valley Film Festival and ongoing CFI Education programs. It houses three state-of-the-art auditoriums, offers a lively and diverse schedule of first-run engagements, including independent, foreign-language and documentary films, and welcomes frequent presentations by artists and experts in the field.
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CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth Street San Rafael, CA 94901 415.454.5813 Main Office 415.454.1222 Info-Line for Showtimes rafaeltheater@cafilm.org
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