Lost Classic: Entre tinieblas / Dark Habits (Pedro Almodóvar, 1983)

I've written about Almodóvar's Entre tinieblas / Dark Habits for The Big Picture Magazine as part of their 'Lost Classics' series - you can read it here.

Los amantes pasajeros / I'm So Excited! (Pedro Almodóvar, 2013)

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Javier Cámara (Joserra), Carlos Areces (Fajas), Raúl Arévalo (Ulloa), Antonio de la Torre (Álex Acero), Lola Dueñas (Bruna), Carmen Machi (concierge), Laya Martí (Bride), Cecilia Roth (Norma Boss), Hugo Silva (Benito), Miguel Ángel Silvestre (Groom), Blanca Suárez (Ruth), Guillermo Toledo (Ricardo Galán), José Luis Torrijo (Más), Paz Vega (Alba), José María Yazpik (Infante).
Synopsis: Madrid, the present. A flight to Mexico takes off with a fault with its landing gear and subsequently circles the skies over Spain while the authorities look for an appropriate place for an emergency landing. The crew sedate the economy class passengers but have their work cut out with the people in business class. As the air stewards put on their best performances, the booze flows and pills are popped, secrets tumble out and inhibitions are lost.

These are just initial thoughts - I'm writing this the same day I saw the film.

    I went in with my expectations lowered, in part because I got too hyped about La piel que habito but also because I was aware that the reviews have been mixed (I didn't read any beforehand), and probably enjoyed it all the more for that: this is froth, but enjoyable froth.
    In fact while the surface of the film is frothy entertainment, there is also a mild satire of the mess that Spain is currently in underneath - the disclaimer at the start of the film saying that this is a work of fiction should be taken with a pinch of salt (the names may have been changed but events on the ground have a basis in reality), as Maria Delgado writes: 'The terms "recession" or "economic crisis" are conspicuously absent from the film, but the Guadiana plotline offers pertinent comment on a society where patronage, politics and public administration are inextricably interwoven' (2013: 40). I guess how much of that undercurrent to the film that you pick up on is dependent on how aware you are of Spanish current affairs.
    Delgado also draws parallels with A Midsummer Night's Dream ('magical makeovers are matched by erotic gameplay' (2013: 38)) and the Valencia cocktail (dosed with mescaline) stands in for the love potion. I like that reading because I think the film can function as a dreamy in-between world - after the Banderas/Cruz prologue the camera closes in on the engine turbine rotating, like milk in black coffee, a kind of hypnotic effect that perhaps signals that what follows is not 'real'. Certainly, up in the clouds, circling with no apparent destination, the passengers are suspended from reality and acting out a farce (signalled by the theatrical red curtains that divide the space) - a diversion for the crew as much as anything else (the 'public' telephone delivering instalments of a soap opera, or glimpses of other possible films).
    I've seen remarks comparing the film to Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios ('a male version') but actually the style of comedy lacks the sophistication of that film and instead harks back to the crude and scatological humour of Almodóvar's very early films such as Pepi, Luci, Bom and Laberinto de pasiones. That kind of humour is not to everyone's taste (those latter two films are not among my favourites) but I think that a lot depends on the characters (and actors) delivering the lines - the air stewards (played by Cámara, Areces, and Arévalo) are written and performed with affection and I think they're probably destined to be regarded as 'classic' Almodóvar characters in much the same way that Agrado (Antonia San Juan) became the standout of Todo sobre mi madre. The dance sequence to The Pointer Sisters' 'I'm So Excited', a longer sequence than is in the trailer, made me cry with laughter -I don't know that any further recommendation is necessary. If I come back to the film again later, I think I'll look a bit more at the actors / performances involved and the side stories -for example, the Ricardo Galán strand in which an actor drives one of his exes mad and another leaves him in order to maintain her sanity has obvious links to Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, but Blanca Suárez's Ruth (in her floral sundress) also cuts a Kika-ish dash through proceedings (also in relation to this plotline: can I ask someone, but Almodóvar in particular, to give Paz Vega another decent lead role in something - she only has a few minutes here but you forget all else while she is onscreen).
    In short, if you go expecting an Almodóvarian dramedy, you will probably be 'disappointed', but if you want a giggle, then the current band of chicos Almodóvar will entertain you.

References:
Delgado, M. (2013) - 'Wings of Desire', Sight & Sound, May, pp.36-38, 40.

La piel que habito / The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar and Agustín Almodóvar, based on the novel Mygale (a.k.a. Tarantula) by Thierry Jonquet.

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Marisa Paredes, Jan Cornet, Blanca Suárez, Roberto Álamo, Eduard Fernández, Susi Sánchez, Bárbara Lennie, Fernando Cayo, José Luis Gómez.

Short version: A rich and macabre body-horror with touches of melodrama, well executed, with excellent performances, but not my cup of tea.

WARNING: SPOILERS ARE INCLUDED -THE FILM IS BEST VIEWED WITHOUT PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

My 5 Favourite Almodóvar Film Posters

I should be seeing La piel que habito / The Skin I Live In over the weekend, with a post to follow at the start of the next week. In the meantime, here are my five favourite posters for Almodóvar films.

Designer: Juan Gatti 

I’ve got the UK Quad poster version of this (i.e. landscape rather than portrait –with the picture on one side and the wording on the other) on my wall. Also look for the Japanese mini poster (chirashi) version, which has Cruz emerging from a bouquet of flowers. It’s a really bold poster and I like how it uses the colour that Almodóvar is most associated with (red) and integrates the pattern from one of Raimunda’s outfits (I think it was either Peter Bradshaw or Jonathan Romney who said that on the basis of this film, Cruz has to be one of the few women in the world who could wear anything that Primark could possibly throw at her). In my longer post about the film I suggest that Volver is kind of an old-fashioned ‘star vehicle’ for Penélope Cruz –it is to an extent built around her existing star image- and her centrality on the poster (and to my knowledge her image was the only one that appeared in promotional materials, although I could be wrong) supports that.

Designer: Juan Gatti

Another Gatti design, another poster that I have on my wall (although not full size). There are several different posters for Women on the Verge but this is my favourite –it captures several things about the film: its overall stylised nature (which starts in the opening credits (also designed by Gatti –the images on the poster are in the credit sequence)), the prominence of primary colours in the set design, and that although there is a central character (Pepa –Carmen Maura), there is more than one woman in the film who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Designer: Iván Zulueta

The poster contains several elements from the film. Most obviously the tiger that the nuns keep in the garden of the convent, but here the tiger is standing for the Mother Superior (played by Julieta Serrano). Note that Yolanda (Cristina Pascual), wearing the dress that she’s wearing when she arrives at the convent, is becoming ensnared in the tiger’s claws, an indication that she risks being devoured by the Mother Superior if she is not careful. But also note that the tiger’s claws are scratching the habit –the Mother Superior is damaging herself, and her behaviour is self-destructive. Apart from the nun’s habit, the poster also contains the symbol of this particular Order (the Convent of the Humiliated Redeemers) –but instead of a heart surrounded by flames, instead it is pierced by syringes, which partly refers to what the nuns believe their mission is (the rescue ‘fallen’ girls, drug addicts seemingly prominent among them), but is also a reference the Mother Superior’s own addictions.

Designer: Juan Gatti

I just like the Saul Bass-ness of this one. It doesn’t work as well in the UK version because they try to fit ‘Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!’ into the same space as ‘Átame!’.

Designer: Juan Gatti

I like the simplicity of this design, which again makes use of the colour red (the dominant colour within the film itself). The circle can be read in many ways –it puts the boy at the centre of a target (the priest pursues him), but it could also be a spotlight (pointing to the elements of ‘performance’ that surround Ignacio). The crossed arms also signal determination –something that can certainly be ascribed to Ignacio in his many different incarnations.

Pedro and Penélope

    Penélope Cruz has appeared in four Almodóvar films to date (Live Flesh (1997), All About My Mother (1999), Volver (2006), and Broken Embraces (2009)). I was going to simply write about Volver for the blog, it is among my favourite films, but in my mind the film is inextricably linked to Cruz and her star image (in part, no doubt, because that was the prism through which I initially viewed it –see note at the end of this post). Almodóvar has over the years worked with a succession of female muses: Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, and most recently Penélope Cruz. He adeptly both plays to their strengths and also pushes them beyond what they have delivered for other directors –labelling him a ‘women’s director’ is often meant to be derogatory, but Almodóvar directs women like few others. While his muses have played iconic roles for other directors, I would argue that the roles given to them by Almodóvar are among their most memorable, and (in terms of UK audiences) often their best known as well. It is a well-circulated story in her interviews that after sneaking into a screening of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), a young Penélope Cruz told her mother that she was going to be an actress and would someday work with Almodóvar. This post looks at how her career has intersected with his, and why Volver can be seen as a ‘star vehicle’ custom-made for her.

Machos in Madrid: Carne trémula / Live Flesh (Pedro Almodóvar, 1997)

Javier Bardem and José Sancho

       Paul Julian Smith states that, along with Almodóvar’s previous film (The Flower of My Secret (1995)), Live Flesh signals the start of a more mature phase of the director’s career (2003: 150), although it maintains several of his predominant interests, including the subversion of gender stereotypes (Smith 1998: 8). Live Flesh is effectively a treatise on machismo and the damage that it inflicts on both men and women, articulated through the generic guise of a thriller. It was the first of Almodóvar’s films to focus exclusively on masculinity and its incarnations (although women are the cause of much that goes on in the film), and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas argues that this focus on male characters ‘exposes some of the contradictions inherent in traditional notions of masculinity’ (2002: 190). 

     Steve Marsh posits that the film is also the first of Almodóvar’s films to use men as something more than ciphers and that not only are they imbued with history, but they are also constructed by it (2004: 54): ‘While this is indisputably Almodóvar’s male movie, its exploration of heterosexual masculinity is intimately linked to the political configurations of the time and space of the city of Madrid’ (58). Almodóvar is part of Madrid’s cultural heritage, having been a major figure in la movida in the 1980s, and all of his films (including Live Flesh) had been set in Madrid. However, Almodóvar had always been a chronicler of the here and now, refusing to focus on the past, and his films were famous for avoiding direct references to Franco or the dictatorship; what marks out Live Flesh is that it is the last of his films (to date) to be set exclusively in Madrid (his next film, All About My Mother (1999), was his first to be set outside of Madrid (it mainly takes place in Barcelona) and his subsequent films have been made in a variety of locations), and the first in which Spain’s past reverberates through the narrative. History, masculinity, the city of Madrid, and Spain itself, become encapsulated in the lives of the three male characters (Sancho (José Sancho), David (Javier Bardem), and Víctor (Liberto Rabal)). 

Comatose Women in The Forest: Hable con ella / Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)

This post is a reworked version of a twenty-minute paper I gave at a conference (‘Bitch, Witch, Whore: Representations of Women in Word and Image’) at Newcastle University in 2006.

Warning: contains spoilers.

   When I was reading about Talk to Her I came across a self-interview (on his website) (2002a) where Almodóvar made reference to Leonor Watling as having been marvellous as Alicia, ‘that sleeping beauty’ (lower case), and that set me to thinking about literary references within the film. The film concerns two ‘couples’ –the first made up of a nurse (Benigno –Javier Cámara) and his patient (Alicia –Leonor Watling), and the second of a journalist (Marco –Dario Grandinetti) and his bullfighting girlfriend (Lydia –Rosario Flores). When Lydia ends up comatose as the result of a bullfight she is placed in the same hospital as Alicia and that is how the two men come to meet each other. Talk to Her is a film concerned with the telling of tales; the audience are rarely shown ‘events’ firsthand, as characters are engaged in a series of flashbacks and a ‘re-telling’ of events. In a departure for Almodóvar, who usually draws his visual and narrative references from the cinema, this film is a tapestry of literary allusions ranging from The Night of the Hunter to Romeo and Juliet to The Hours, with the result that Talk to Her itself can be read in terms of a modern day fairytale. The upbeat ending is also in keeping with Bruno Bettelheim’s reading of the fairy story as being ‘optimistic, no matter how terrifyingly serious some features of the story may be’ (1976: 37).

   While the film focuses on the two male protagonists (Benigno and Marco), this [post] will examine the woman with whom they both interact, Alicia. She is one of a series of comatose or silent women in the narrative, and is cared for in a clinic called ‘El Bosque’, or ‘The Forest’. Alicia is at the epicentre, although not always the subject, of a series of references to archetypal literary heroines such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Alice (in Wonderland). This [post] will argue that the combination of literary references and Almodóvar’s reputation as a ‘woman’s director’ means that there is more to the representation of the film’s women, who are comatose, voiceless, and lacking control over their own bodies, than is apparent at first glance. 

New poster for La piel que habito

Via tío Oscar

This is the new poster for Almodóvar’s La piel que habito (which looks like a photo from a distance but is actually a painting), and there are also new images and clips in circulation (for example, see La Katarsis del Cine Español). I’m not going to post much more about the film now until it has its release in the UK (which now looks like it will be the end of August rather than November) –I’m deliberately not reading the reviews coming out of Cannes because I’d rather go in knowing as little as possible. Nobody Knows Anybody will also be having an Almodóvar month closer to the UK release, so when the date seems a bit more concrete (it seems odd to me that we would get the film before Spain (where it has a September date)) I’ll post some details about that.
Fingers crossed tomorrow for Pedro & co. at Cannes.