La filmoteca española in Madrid — a movie theatre dedicated to preserving and presenting classic and arthouse cinema — has just wrapped up its Ciclo Almodóvar, which is to say the month of March was almost entirely dedicated to Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar's entire filmography and its influences.
Due to happenstance, scheduling availability, and raw desire, I only got to see about four of his films. Before this ciclo started, I'd already seen his entire filmography, a few of his films more than once. Any serious cineaste will tell you that he's one of the greatest Spanish filmmakers working today, and I argue that he's the best living European filmmaker. While the demarcations aren't terribly neat as he contradicts himself with the trajectory of his work, for me there are three distinct eras in his filmography. The first one begins with Pepi, Luci, Bom — a charming amateur film made with friends and containing more shock than actual artistic valor — and transitions into the second with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown — which truly showcased his confidence and voice that his previous crewed-up films hadn't. The second stage ends with Talk to Her, and it's a stage filled with obvious turbulence, sandwiched and mixing between the goofy and crude comedies of his first stage, adding new tragicomedies in the fray, and the exaggerated and oversaturated reality of his third, which is my personal favorite and clearly begins with Bad Education. We're still in this stage. But like I've said, he contradicts himself and we may even be entering a fourth stage as his last two films, I'm So Excited and Julieta don't fit neatly into this category.
Anyway, the films I watched were Talk to Her (presented by digital restorators and their talk made me respect them more and lament their hard work less... to be honest, I didn't watch too many of the films because they were almost all in digital and not in 35mm prints. I regret this.), Bad Education (presented by Almodóvar himself and actors Fran Boira, Fede Álvarez, and Spain's finest working actor, Javier Cámara), Volver (presented again by Almodóvar, Blanca Portillo, and Penélope Cruz... though they only said hi beforehand and didn't do a Q&A), and Broken Embraces.
It's frustrated me that, for the most part, Almodóvar is either largely underappreciated by Spaniards (who, for whatever cultural or artistic reasons, consider him overrated and not representative of the country on the world stage), overappreciated by fame whores who just like him because he's famous but don't understand why, or misunderstood by foreign arthouse enthusiasts who consider him more in the line of the Italian neorealists who were trying to draw a sociological portrait of Spain than who he really is: the true heir to Hitchcock that even Brian De Palma never fully realized.
But what makes his films so great, particularly ones from the third stage? Beginning with an analysis of Talk to Her, which is technically the second stage but still a very important transition film and likely the best film I saw this month, we see Almodóvar finally get into the groove that would propel the rest of his work. It's the most realistic film I watched and only with a few moments of the luridness that would characterize the rest of the pieces. It covers two men who are both in love with comatose women and covers themes that are explored in other works: the power of sex, the devastation of silence (Silencio, incidentally, was the original title of Julieta), and how one's gender affects one's place in the world. There are a few goofy moments and some crazier self-conscious shots but for the most part, it's an extremely steady-handed drama about people with heavy problems. The themes are shockingly universal and this humanism carries on through his third period, albeit with not as much sincerity.
Then we get to Bad Education, which is a film within a film mixed with a flashback and maybe they're seeping into each other. I won't even bother to describe the plot just because unspooling it is half the fun, but it's a damn fun ride. Weirdly, though Spanish is my third language and wasn't watching the film with subtitles (and the last time I saw it was in high school), I understood every twisting plot point, perhaps because the camera and the design and the performances seduce you into a state of heightened focus. It has obvious influences from Vertigo — what with its title design, music, and cinematography — to more recent arthouse fare — it changes aspect ratio to delineate different narratives, is entirely self-conscious as a work of fiction, and gives a big middle finger to censors who are upset by portrayals of gay sex in cinema. What makes it truly great, and what really needs to be noted when considering the artist, is Almodóvar's script. At the Q&A, he called it likely his best-written work. And it's hard to disagree with a plot so clearly personal without being navel-gazing and at the same time mixing thriller plots and subplots that are as complex as anything by Raymond Chandler or Hitchock. Not to dismiss his prowess as a director, but he's a writer first and foremost, with a command of proselike, quasi-realistic dialogue on the level of Mamet and Tarantino. I'm glad my Spanish is good enough to recognize this.
His next film was Volver, which stayed in my memory from previous viewings as being better than the time I went to the cinema to see it. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact I was starving going into the picture and it contains a lot of food porn. Volver is similarly complex but, somehow, more confusing to me than Bad Education was. Perhaps, as my Spanish friend from el pueblo explained to me, is that the film has a more difficult time resonating with me as a foreigner who is decidedly urban and generally unaffected by portrayals of characters in a poor rural town in a different country. After all, the Oscar-nominated Cruz is widely derided by Spaniards for her performance for not nailing the rural woman (apparently it's like when a New Yorker is trying to play a southerner and doesn't totally pull it off), and I wouldn't have noticed this if my friends hadn't told me. The film deals with female resilience in an increasingly turbulent world, with splashes of insane melodrama and even possible magic realism. It's a fine film, but it didn't move me like the other works I saw this month.
And the last film, chronologically, was Broken Embraces, a beautifully directed ode to cinema, with heavy influences from Peeping Tom , Douglas Sirk, and the Hitchcock of the '50s and '60s. It traces the torrid love affair of a screenwriter and his eventual blindness from a car wreck which, like Bad Education, has plots turning in on themselves, with the sets and costumes draped in red and primary colors. As someone who's made films and worked on movie sets and who just loves overwrought melodramas, the movie really erupted emotion in me, despite the fact that it's one of his more style-over-substance works. And it bored my two Italian friends who were sitting behind me, so that should be considered. I guess.
In conclusion, the technique and the heart of Pedro Almodóvar is what led me to my very logical conclusion of the opinion that he is the greatest European filmmaker working today. His close runners-up are Nicolas Winding Refn (more technique than heart), Lars Von Trier (a lot of brain and emotion but not as steady), Christopher Nolan (great technique but occasionally overly earnest), Martin McDonagh (a genius writer but without the cinephile's directorial style), and Christian Mungiu (who is honestly probably as brilliant as Almodóvar but without the joy). He's a truly inspiring force, the great wrecking ball and passionate lover of cinema in its purest, most entertaining form.
