As in the case of a Woody Allen who had a hard time getting the point, Pedro Almodóvar He was never my saint. At least at the outset. And it is not that he now defends tooth and nail all his filmography. But it is true that over time I have been discovering true works of art of cinema made in Almodóvar.
The issue sometimes is that several aspects come together that manage to win you over to the cause of a creator, a film director in this case, putting aside previous prejudices or simply endorsements of films that don't tell you anything, sometimes because, as in any artistic manifestation , it was not the best time to enjoy it.
In the comings and goings of a versatile guy like Almodóvar, there are themes that more or less catch your eye. The question is to take advantage of the moment coinciding with your own comings and goings to find that movie that reaches you in every way. It may be one of his darkest series or the liveliest of comedies.
In any case, when Almodóvar receives all of his work you view it in a different way. Because you begin to understand the motives, the deep wills that justify excesses that range from color to overacting. It's like when you meet someone about whom you had your own previous evaluations, only to end up pleasantly accepting the defeat of your prejudices. At the time I rescued those scripts made booksToday I stick to filmography, with some surprise ...
Top 3 recommended films of Pedro Almodóvar
The Skin I Live In
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:The genius of Almodóvar rushes in a torrential rush in this film turned into an existentialist thriller as rarely seen. A movie that is a fascinating and harrowing vision towards obsessions and madness from the absences that mark the most.
The skin as the essence of everything when the already impossible touch of another skin is longed for; or the face that will never look at us again and that becomes a living image of an unreachable soul through the parapet of that same skin. The skin is inhabited in any case to feel the world in the first place, with the unforgettable magic of the first things.
The film's plot becomes darker and darker, with Dr. Robert Ledgard freeing his tormented spirit between science and a quest for immortality, or at least stolen life. Claustrophobic but fascinating. The usual color of so many Almodóvar films is reduced to a play of blacks and grays so that only the skin stands out against a disturbing background.
Talk to her
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:There is quite a bit of disruption in this film. Reductionist critics always point out Almodóvar's fixation on the female figure as the basic protagonist of his stories. And it would be because the woman as a character gives more play in that more intense vision of life.
But, not knowing if it was an intention to surprise or simply because he felt like it, on this occasion the trunk of the plot grows more in the aspect of men and their way of facing longings, sadness, desires, frustrations and fears. Aspects on which Almodóvar builds one of his best plots moved between confusion, surprise, concern and that rabid humanity that only in this type of intrastories, half entanglements, half modern epics, are they able to transmit to us with total empathy.
Benigno is a nurse who falls in love with a dancer he does not know. After an accident, she falls into a coma and ends up in his care. When a bullfighter is caught and falls into a coma, she is taken to the same room, and Benigno befriends her companion, Marcos. Inside the clinic, the life of the four characters flows in all directions, past, present and future, dragging the four to an unsuspected destination.
pain and glory
AVAILABLE ON ANY OF THESE PLATFORMS:With the declared desire to rescue biographical aspects of Almodóvar himself, the film depersonalizes the matter and introduces us to a director named Salvador Mallo. A fold that serves to play the puzzle of what can be more adjusted to reality or not. In addition to offering certain freedom to the director to invent or make up any aspect.
The vision from a more than adult age of a Salvador Mallo besieged by certain more than intimidating ailments has that undoubted nostalgia that is difficult to treat. Because melancholy has something of a joyful memory, while nostalgia is the complete surrender that nothing will return.
Childhood takes over everything with its scenes full of light and dreams. Youth develops with that natural flow of excesses and nascent drives. The final cocktail is a maturity that observes everything as passed through the kaleidoscope of thousands of psychedelic, painful lights.