looking for parallels

I'm not really happy with the UK's "live and let die" with Covid policy pretending everything can go back to normal, so I still don't go out much, but a new Almodovar movie was a good enough excuse to break my own Covid rules in a half-empty cinema on a Monday lunchtime screening. As it happens, the last time I had been inside a cinema before this was the previous Almodovar film, Pain and Glory, in August 2019.

So there are two films to discuss here, really, the double motherhood story at the core of the film (which would have made a perfectly reasonable full length film on its own), and the digging up the bodies of the civil war story wrapped around it and only flimsily attached to it. I'm thinking anybody watching it to learn about the missing casualties of the civil war will be disappointed. That topic would deserve a film (or many) on its own, and if Almodovar doesn't want to do that film that's fine by me. Other directors like Alex de la Iglesia have covered the madness and cruelty of that war and the trauma caused by it very convincingly.

At first, the title of the film and the maternal theme of the main story put me off a bit, as both Penelope Cruz and I are a bit too old for these things, but it did win me over with the generational contrast between the two women, and with the classic Almodovar combo of Penelope plus primary colours. Never fails. As usual, we get slogans to link us to the present day (ok, recent past) feminism, in this case it's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's title "We should all be feminists" appearing on Penelope's t-shirt. Not sure when this was filmed (allegedly Almodovar had a script and a poster design ready ten years ago), but we're firmly in the pre-Covid era of the late 2010s, with SUVs and iphones all over the place.

So much for my random thoughts after first viewing - for a professional review, try Peter Bradshaw's in the Guardian.

no pain all glory

Almodovar's Pain and glory (Dolor y gloria) is released in the UK today, and I went into the first showing in Oxford, at lunchtime today. (A grand total of 4 other people showed up too.) He's now the only Spanish director whose films reliably get released in UK cinemas (in contrast to these films that don't get shown here), so it's also a case of use it or lose it.

If I've got all my numbers crunched the right way, this is his 21st feature length film as a writer-director, and it's the 18th I've seen (I still need to catch up with some of the wilder ones from before 1988). So a few words are in order (also, this blog has an almodovar tag that needs feeding).

As the media (even in the UK) have widely reported, this one has Antonio Banderas playing a thinly disguised, ageing and ailing version of San Pedro himself, which is of course hilarious for those of us who still remember a barely adult Banderas in the very early Almodovar movies. We're anchored in a very up-to date present (watch out for graffiti representing the #metoo type slogan "hermana yo si te creo" which dates from 2018), looking back at the director's distant past, from his childhood to the early movies. Various clever tricks help to bring back the ghosts from the past, and it's all very warm-hearted, life-affirming and all that. As always, it doesn't harm to have Penelope Cruz on board, ironically playing San Pedro's mother.

All my favourite Almodovar films have female protagonists (Volver, La flor de mi secreto, Todo sobre mi madre, etc. ), but given that this one was about himself, he didn't really have that choice, and right now, just hours after seeing it for the first time, I think I like it almost as much as some of the great female-led ones. Having said that, I will go back and watch Volver for the 3rd time (at least - can't believe I've only seen it twice, must be a bug in the bookkeeping), and Julieta, also for the third time.

Anyhow. Enough of me rambling. Here's a proper review from Peter Bradshaw, who saw it at Cannes.

Almodóvar’s Frankenstein

The skin I live in / la piel que habito

I guess the quickest way to define this film is “Almodóvar’s take on Frankenstein,” although it is loosely based on a different book, a novel by Thierry Jonquet. As I’ve seen a dozen of Almodóvar’s movies, most of them more than once, but zero Frankenstein movies, I’m coming to this junction from a different angle than most people in the English speaking world. So here are some thoughts on how the film fits in with the work of San Pedro (I unilaterally elevated him to sainthood in a previous blog entry, these catholics are sometimes too slow in recognising achievement).

The movie is in fact, Almodóvar through and through, in every part of it there are aspects that are familiar, from the medical / bioethical issues through to he (trans)gender, rape, and sexual identity themes. As these are natural parts of the story, they don’t feel like the auteur is quoting himself – it just amazes me every time that he can assemble a completely different story from what at first glance might appear to be the same building blocks. (Which strikes me especially as I don’t necessarily share his obsession with these recurring themes, and yet they win me over every time.)

There is one interlude where Almodóvar is in fact shamelessly citing himself and contrasting the shrill style of his early work with the mellower style he has adopted since “All about my mother.” It’s the sequence that features a man in a tiger carnival costume and references Kika among other early works. The tiger aside, the rest is all in very mature taste - just savour the interior decorations, worlds away from the women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, although everybody in this movie has good reasons to be on the verge of that or worse.

For fans of the early work it is, of course, a major occasion to welcome back Antonio Banderas, who last appeared in Women on the verge and in Tie me up, tie me down! I prefer not to think of what he did in those 21 years in between (am very busy erasing those spy kids movies from my memory), but it is good to have him back, even if he looks ten times older than the last time. He looks a bit like Sean Connery from some angles, maybe Almodóvar and Banderas should do a Bond movie together, now that would be interesting!

Another familiar face (for the aficionados of Spanish cinema, at least) is the female lead Elena Anaya, who had a supporting role in Julio Medem’s Sex and Lucia and a lead role in Room in Rome (and a small role in Talk to her, apparently, will have to watch that one again to find her). And we welcome back Marisa Paredes who starred in All about my mother and Flower of my secret.

The Frankenstein-esque story is interesting too, of course, not least because of all the bioethical dilemmas that we also have to confront here in the real world, but that wouldn’t necessarily have convinced me to watch the movie if it had arrived from somewhere else. It’s the way San Pedro does it. He could make a movie out of the phone directory of Madrid and I’m sure it would still be fascinating.




The skin I live in is on general UK-wide release from today (I was lucky to catch a preview last night). Full details at IMDB.

Peter Bradshaw's review in the Guardian (his second take, as he already reviewed it when it was shown at Cannes).

favourite films of 09

... looking back at the movies I've seen on the big screen this year, there are a few clear favourites (with links to blog entries):

Sin nombre (a rare case of a movie that I find both deeply depressing and still loveable. Most disturbing is the observation how close the violent gang is to what we call civilised society. We've just delegated the violence bit to the armed forces.)

Fish Tank Not all the movies I watch are in Spanish, you see ...

Broken embraces ... though around half of them are, in fact.

oh, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona was great, too.

shall I dare to list favourites of the noughties as well ? too much trouble to check through systematically, but Almodovar's Volver would certainly feature in the top 10, as well as Medem's Lucia y el sexo. Cedric Klapisch's Auberge Espagnole is one of my all time favourites. Fatih Akin's Gegen die Wand (head-on) springs to mind, as do Good-bye Lenin and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and we mustn't forget Amelie, which I think came out just after the millennium ...

So I guess it's been a good year, and decade, if we leave aside all the politics and wars.

San Pedro

I saw the new Almodovar movie, Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces), last weekend, and it struck me that the director has reached a status resembling sainthood -- no matter what he does, we love it, well at least those of us who prefer hand-made movies to the stuff that's made in hollywood.

In abrazos rotos, Almodovar mainly talks about himself, even cites a mock version of his classic Mujeres al borde ... (now 20 years old, would you believe it). Note the contrast between the 2008 colour scheme (red and other primary colours) and the orange-infested one of 1988! As the movie is mainly about himself, it is a bit more bloke-ish than Volver (which is probably my all-time favourite Pedro movie -- I remember coming out of the cinema and being tempted to join the queue to watch it again straight away), but as I say, he's a saint, so he can get away with anything. Doesn't harm to have Penelope Cruz in the movie, as she is pretty close to sainthood herself.

anyhow, it's been an amazing 2 decades since Mujeres al borde. Just one of San Pedro's movies from this era that I haven't seen yet (Kika), and I just ordered the dvd ...

PS oh, and IMDB tells me it's Salma Hayek's birthday today -- I think I have yet to see a recent Mexican movie that doesn't reference her :)