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Pedro Almodovar,
b. Calzada de Calatrava, Spain, 1951 1974; La Caida de Sodoma (s); Dos Putas, o Historia de Amor que Termina en Boda (s). 1975: Hamenaje (s); E! Sueno (s). 1976; El Estrella (s), 1977: Complementos (s); SKXU Va (s). 1978; Polle, t’olle, Folleme, Tim; Salome (s). 1980: Pepi, Luci, Bom y Otras Chicas del MotitoWPepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom. 1982: Laberinto de Pasiones/Labyrinth of Passion 1983: Entre Tinieblas/Dark Habits. 19&4; Qiie He Hecho Yo Para Merecer Esto?
What Hace I Done to Deserve This?. 1985; Trayler para Amantes de lo Prohibtdo (s), 1986; Mdtador. 1987: La Ley del Deseo/Lato of Desire. 1988: Mujeres al Borde de wn Ataque de Nervios/Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. 1990: Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!. 1991: High Heels. 1993: Kifai. Almod6var was one of the most welcome explosions of the eighties and a sign of the new Spain. Whereas Carlos Saura (nearly twenty years older than Almodovar) made intensely measured and psychologically reflective films, with the innate secrecy of someone raised under the Franco regime. Almodovar is excessive, garish, outlandishly inventive, and irrepressible. He is openly gay, devoted to sexual confusion, and eternally committed to the chance of love. His mode is satiric yet generous and free from moraUy.ing. He lias remarked on his debt not just to Hitchcock, Wilder, and Bufiuel, but to Frank Tashlin. Indeed, there is a cartoonlike abandon and delirium in his best films and a complete faith in the torrential subconscious.
A frustrated provincial (he came from the area of La Mancha), he moved to Madrid in 1967 and worked for the telephone company. He joined an experimental theatre group, he wrote comic strips, and he was active in rock music. He began making short films on Super-8 at the time of Franco’s death.
Almodovar must mean more in Spain than anywhere else, yet his generation has been insistent on throwing out the country’s past. Still, he has preferred to work in Spain, with a striking band of actors—notably Carmen Maura and Antonio Banderas. Women on the Verge is his most successful film, the one in which gaiety, violence, and tragedy jostle together most dangerously. Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down.’ was a relative disappointment. An energy like Almodovar’s needs to keep expanding or risk becoming mannered. So he may need to take on fresh, dangerous territory. America could prove a very fruitful inspiration, for he knows American culture, and he is ideally placed to smash our old, fixed dreams about what it is to be Hispanic.