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| Miguel Bosé |
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, Miguel Bosé, Feodor Atkine, Miriam Díaz Aroca.
Synopsis: After more than fifteen years abroad, singer Becky del Paramo (Paredes) returns home to Spain to find her daughter, Rebeca (Abril), grown-up and married to one of Becky’s former lovers (Atkine). In her mother’s absence, Rebeca has taken to watching the performances of Femme Letal (Bosé), a drag artiste who imitates Becky’s musical performances from the 1960s. When all of these elements come together, murder follows…
A.k.a. the first Spanish film that I attempted to watch without subtitles. It didn’t go very well because I’d only had three Spanish lessons at that point, and surprisingly enough cross-dressing and murder investigations hadn’t featured in the vocab lists, but I did make some very detailed notes about the costumes! Shortly afterwards I did manage to find a copy with subtitles, so all became clear –it is virtually impossible to follow the plot if you can’t understand what is being said. I’d forgotten how much I liked it and also how strong the performances by the three central actors (Abril, Paredes, and Bosé –the latter of whom actually plays three different roles within the film, which was one of the things that confused me during the without-subtitles viewing) are. I was going to write a longer post about it for Almodóvar Month, but I’ve decided to use it for an ‘Anatomy of a Scene’ post at some point in the future instead. This seems to be one of Almodóvar’s lesser-known films, which is a shame because it is one of my favourites –check it out!
