PEDRO ALMODĂVAR
By José Arroyo
Pedro AlmodĂłvar is a star director. As with stars, his name alone condenses a series of identities that change over time but can also be historically located. Heâs been first a leading light of Madridâs underground arts scene during the period of Spainâs transition to democracy from 1975 to 1982, then the enfant terrible of Spanish Cinema in the 1980s, later the Spanish director so celebrated internationally that he becomes first synonymous with its national cinema and then eclipses it altogether: itâs fair to say that more has been written about AlmodĂłvar in English than on the rest of Spanish Cinema put together. Now he is a grand old man of European cinema, an acknowledged master of the art. However, âAlmodĂłvarâ signifies not only a career, or social changes, but ways of being, ways of looking and certain types of movies. His great gift has been to make those on the edges of society, the excluded, derided, the subalterns of society (in different ways and on different levels, women, gays, the deserted, the bereft, drag queens, drug addicts, social and sexual criminals) not only central to his films but to depict them in such a way that the audience empathises and sometimes even identifies with them â they not only become understandable and knowable but âtheyâ become âweâ. Some of the greatest female characters ever created for the cinema, often brought to life in career-defining performances by some of Spainâs greatest actresses (Carmen Maura as Pepa in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and PenĂ©lope Cruz as Raimunda in Volver to name but two) are the heart and motor of his films; and the setting for their story and the way it is told is often a marvel of mise-en-scĂšne.
Contexts
An understanding of the political, cinematic and cultural contexts in which AlmodĂłvar began making films is crucial to understanding his achievements and the impact of his early films. Born a decade after the Civil War, AlmodĂłvar is part of a generation who grew up as Franco declined into old age. Important events that frame his early career are the states of emergency, which suspended civil liberties, declared by the regime in January of 1969 and December 1970 (the period when AlmodĂłvar first moved to Madrid and which he would later use as setting for the beginning of Live Flesh), the assassination of Carrero Blanco, Spainâs Prime Minister, which brought an end to the relative liberalisation of the dictablanda or soft dictatorship in 1973 and Spainâs tenuous transition to Democracy from Francoâs death in 1975 to the election of the Spanish Socialist Workerâs Party (PSOE) in 1982. The fragility of Spainâs hold on Democracy was made evident by Colonel Tejeroâs attempted coup in 1981. When AlmodĂłvar says, as he has done repeatedly, that his films were made as if Franco had never existed, it doesnât mean that he was unaware of politics but that, well aware of all the risks, he still chose to make his art in freedom. It is important to remember that the titles of some of the shorts and Super-8 films he made during this period (Dos putas ⊠o una historia de amor que termina en boda/ Two whores ⊠or a Love Story that Ends with a Wedding or Folle, Folle ⊠FĂłlleme Tim/ Fuck, Fuck, Fuck Me Tim [1978]) alone would have landed him in jail a few years earlier. Bom peeing on the policemanâs wife in Pepi, Luci, Bom might seem merely cheeky camp, until one remembers that a few years earlier Spain had been a military dictatorship, or speculates on the consequences of such imagery had Colonel Tejeroâs coup succeeded. It is only then that that representation in Pepi, one of many in his early films, is revealed as the radical and subversive gesture that it is. What his early films evoke most powerfully is a sense of courage and daring made possible by youth and an emerging sense of personal and social liberation.
AlmodĂłvar is remarkable first because he managed to make films at all â I canât think of another director of his generation who hails from the rural peasantry â and second because the films he did make were so different from anything that had been made in Spain until that time. When AlmodĂłvar began his career, ideals of great filmmaking were seen to be exemplified by Victor Ericeâs El EspĂritu de la colmena/ The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973, and Carlos Sauraâs CrĂa cuervos/ Cria (USA)/ Raise Ravens (UK), 1975. Erice and Sauraâs great works are densely symbolic, hermetic, allegorical art cinema made at a time when this mode of filmmaking was a way for directors and large audiences in Spain to commune in a social critique of the regime and of society. In a context in which this was seen as the model of, and purpose for, cinematic art, Pepi and Labyrinth of Passion, with their broad winks to Andy Warhol and John Waters; their borrowings from comic books, Hello Magazine, and a wide range of references from cinema and other aspects of popular culture; their scatological and corrosive humour and crude technique, not to speak of their superficiality and campness, were greeted by the critical establishment with all the shock of the new and found wanting aesthetically. As Vicente Molina-Foix has written, âit took a long time for AlmodĂłvar to be recognised as a great filmmaker in his own countryâ.1 Luckily, AlmodĂłvarâs first features gave voice to, and found ardent support from, both an emerging youth culture and a gay subculture.
âLa movidaâ as mode of production and consumption
Pepi and Labyrinth are products of a period and of a scene of which the films in turn are now the most vivid documents. The period is the transition to Democracy. âThis country is beginning to have so much Democracy, I donât know where it will endâ, says Luciâs husband in Pepi ⊠, âwe have to give the Communists a good beating!â The scene is âLa nueva movida Madrileñaâ, a loose amalgamation of artists, performers and musicians who had no more in common than clubbing together, a desire for the new, particularly as refracted from the fashion and music scenes in London, first glam, then punk, then the New Romantics, and a wish to shock anyone in Spain who chose to cling to outmoded ideas. Many of the artists who formed part of the scene and later became famous (Ceesepe, Fanny McNamara, Alaska y los Pegamoides, Costus etc.) contributed to and/or appeared in Pepi and Labyrinth. Though the films are still funny and they surprisingly continue to shock, they are also now imbued with a patina of nostalgia that accrues to that which is lost â the youth of the first generation of Madrileños since the Civil War able to explore their identities in a Democratic country where new norms of behaviour had not yet been agreed to, and with all the attendant pleasures and dangers that entails.
Pepi, shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm for release, was made over a period of two years on a shoestring budget provided mainly by friends. It found an avid audience, particularly at the Alphaville cinema in Madrid, where it was so successful the cinema itself financed AlmodĂłvarâs second feature, Labyrinth of Passion. The two films became staples of the repertoire, playing at the cinema for years, often at late screenings to audiences already so fond of and familiar with the films they would voice the dialogue before the filmâs characters. The scene where Fanny McNamara sniffs nail polish in Labyrinth, for example, was received with the kind of relish and audience participation Anglo-American audiences might remember from midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
If the screenings of Pepi and Labyrinth were the focal point of ritual happenings, AlmodĂłvar was happening right along with them, his finger not only on the pulse of La movida but also constantly dipping into many other art forms. Whilst still working at his day job as a clerk for the National Telephone Company, he was also a member of the Los Goliardos theatre troupe, performed and recorded in a punk band (AlmodĂłvar y McNamara, whose songs would become part of the soundtrack to The Law of Desire), wrote short stories, photonovels and created the character of Patty Diphusa for the La Luna de Madrid magazine.2 All of these activities, along with what amounts to a genius for publicity in general (as is evident in the parodies of TV advertisements he inserted in almost all the early films, risking bringing the narratives to a standstill in order to get a good joke in) and self promotion in particular (still evident in the meticulous press books prepared for each new release) meant he couldnât be ignored and he wasnât. Heâd become not only a director but an instantly recognisable national star.
Entering the mainstream
Dark Habits, What Have I Done to Deserve This? and Matador represent a steady progression in AlmodĂłvarâs career. Dark Habits was the first of his films to be produced by a âproperâ production company (Tesauro S.A., who would also go on to produce What Have I Done to Deserve This?); What Have I DoneâŠ? was his first mainstream popular and critical success; Matador was the first of his films to receive the funding from Spainâs Ministry of Culture then essential for any mainstream filmmaking in Spain. The three films are the last he would make for outside production companies and they are instructive in what each tells us about AlmodĂłvarâs developing aesthetic.
Dark Habits is still very funny and a pleasure to watch for many reasons: the jokes, the music, the increasing evidence that AlmodĂłvar has an eye for shot compositions that are pleasing in themselves but also progress the narrative. The actresses in the film are wonderful and now evidently a repertory company (later to be much publicised as Las chicas AlmodĂłvar whose number would also include some chicos such as, most famously, Antonio Banderas): Cecilia Roth, Carmen Maura, Julieta Serrano had already appeared in his previous films; Antonio Banderas, Immanol Arias, Assumpta Serna, not cast here, had appeared before in earlier films and would again in later ones: Chus Lampreave makes her first appearance here and would delight audiences in AlmodĂłvar films for years to come. The film is also interesting in that it demonstrates that AlmodĂłvar is not infallible with actors; that the great performances in his films are collaborations for which actors need to be given their due; the proof is Cristina S. Pascualâs performance as Yolanda, unarguably the worst in AlmodĂłvarâs oeuvre an...