Pedro Almodóvar stands for a cinema of love, desire, and identity. His films made the private political and the eccentric human. Thanks to his radicality and emotional depth, he is considered one of Spain's most important directors. Here are his five best works.
Pedro Almodóvar and the Art of Liberation
The matter-of-factness with which Almodóvar has foregrounded themes like homosexuality and transsexuality since the beginning of his career is all the more astonishing when one considers that Spain was fascistically ruled until the 1970s.
Unimpressed by this, Almodóvar has since been bringing stories to the screen that are about the emotions of real people, and showing the world as it is – just perhaps a little more beautiful and a little more colorful. Or as Peter Travers once wrote:
„Pedro Almodóvar doesn't just make films. Almodóvar is cinema.“
Tie me up – Bind me!
Can love be forced? The question of no less is dealt with in „Tie“And to spoil it right away: there's no clear answer. But there is a love story of a special kind, with a plot that couldn't be more offensive: a man falls in love with a woman, breaks into her home, ties her up, and decides to stay with her until she falls in love with him too.
Sounds like a male Violence fantasy, but it turns out to be a touching story about both the beauty and the cruelty of love. A film that is both tender and mad.
Return – Return
Often enough, Pedro Almodóvar celebrates in his films the beautiful and enjoyable aspects of passion. In „Return“shows, on the other hand, that passion, when it boundless becomes, all too easily into Violence Because when Raimundas's sex- and alcohol-addicted friend Paco is alone with her daughter one night and tries to rape her, she can only save herself by plunging a knife into his stomach.
To cover up the murder, they hide Paco's body in a freezer. But Raimunda has even bigger worries: according to eyewitnesses, her mother, who was thought to be dead, has risen from the dead and returned to life. Or was she never dead at all? In „Volver,“ Almodóvar processes the Threat of the Patriarchy and delivers a fiery plea for more solidarity among women.
The skin I live in
Rarely has such a good film had such a bad trailer. These dreadful two minutes have probably put many people off seeing „The skin I live in“to watch. A mistake! Because you've definitely never seen a film like it.
Here too, as is often the case with Almodóvar, it's about lost love. But what the main character Robert, played by Antonio Banderas, is capable of regaining that love in any way at all, one can do not describe. You have to see it! „The Skin I Live In“ is a brilliantly intricate Revenge thriller, a sensitive melodrama about sexual identity and, incidentally, a cinematic reflection on the relationship between actor, director, and audience.
Talk to her
Twelve years after „Atame,“ Almodóvar revisited the theme of unrequited love in "Talk to Her," albeit with a much more serious tone: The journalist Marco is in a relationship with the bullfighter Lydia. The problem is: Lydia is in a coma following an accident. To help him find a way to express his love for her, the nurse advises him Benigno, ...he should just talk to her; maybe she'll listen to him.
Later, it turns out that Benigno himself is in love with a woman who is in a coma. Namely, the dancer Alicia. But unlike Marco and Lydia, who were already a couple, Alicia has no idea of Benigno's love for her. She doesn't even know who he is. A sensitive and gripping drama, which at a BBC Survey ranked 28th out of 177 film critics as the most significant film of the 21st century.
Torn embraces
Pedro Almodóvar always celebrates in his films Cinema itself. References to film history classics and tributes to great directors can be found again and again. Some of his films, including „Torn embraces“, making the film itself their subject: The story told is that of an old, now blind director.
He remembers the romance he once had with an actress, which he still mourns to this day. In a elegant interplay Through flashbacks, an Almodóvar-esque story unfolds, full of entanglements and twists, with references to film noir of the 1940s and 50s Years. Ultimately, „Broken Embraces“ is a film about seeing, the male gaze, and cinema itself.
Not on the list, but no less worth seeing
- „Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown“
- „The Law of Desire“
- „All About My Mother“
- „La mala educación – Bad Education“
- „Flying Lovers“
- „Julietta“
- „Parallel Mothers“
