Pedro Almodovar

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (Calzada de Calatrava, September 25, 1949) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer, who has achieved the greatest acclaim and resonance outside of Spain in recent decades. from the filmmaker Luis Buñuel. He has received the main international film awards, among other two Oscars, an Ariel award and several Goya Awards. In 2017 he was the president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

He holds the status of Knight of the Order of the French Legion of Honor (1997), in addition to having obtained the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (1998). He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Harvard University in 2009, a decoration that he also received in June 2016 at the University of Oxford. He won the Ariel Award for Best Ibero-American Film for Pain and Glory in 2020.

Biography

Childhood and youth (1949-1985)

He was born on September 25, 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, into a family of muleteers, with a large presence of women, whose world he would capture in films such as Volver. Her parents were Antonio Almodóvar (died 1980) and Francisca Caballero (1916-1999). She emigrated to Madrigalejo, Orellana la Vieja and later to Parla (Madrid), and she studied high school in the capital Cáceres with Salesian and Franciscan parents, being her at that time when she became fond of cinema. Her first communion was made in the Monegrino town of Poleñino, Huesca province.

At the age of eighteen, he moved to Madrid to study film, but was unable to enroll in the recently closed Film School. He then worked in various jobs until he obtained a position as an orderly at Telefónica, which he held for twelve years, at the same time that he plunged headlong into the world of the movida madrileña, and was a member of the theater group Los Goliardos, in which he met Félix Rotaeta and Carmen Maura, and the parodic punk-glam rock duo Almodóvar & McNamara in which, together with Fabio McNamara (Fabio de Miguel), he generated songs as funny as Great bargain or I'm going to be a mom .

He also wrote the short novel Fuego en las entrailas, a porn photonovela (Toda tuya), multiple stories in newspapers (El País, Diario 16 and La Luna) and countercultural comics such as Star, El Víbora and Vibraciones, where he created his own character, named Patty Diphusa, the protagonist of the novel that bears his name published in 1991, which was a great editorial success and one of the most significant works of the emergence of homosexual literature in Spain in the decade of 1990.

He directed his first film, Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón, with some 500,000 pesetas, which he obtained from his friends and the script for Ereciones generales, which El Víbora had commissioned.

His popular recognition began, however, with the film What have I done to deserve this? (1984), also starring Carmen Maura, a fetish actress in his early films. In 1985 she shot the medium-length film Trailer for lovers of the forbidden , commissioned by TVE for the program La edad de oro . This stage of initiation closes with the disturbing, and misunderstood at the time, Matador.

Maturity (since 1986)

Pedro Almodóvar in 1988.

In 1986 he founded, together with his brother Agustín, the production company El Deseo, whose first films would be The Law of Desire (1987), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), Tie me up! (1990) and Tacones lejanos (1991), which would allow him to achieve some international repercussion, especially in Argentina and France, and abundant international awards. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown would be Almodóvar's first contact with the Oscars, when she was selected by the Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as an Oscar candidate for best language film foreign.

After the disaster of Kika (1993), her career did not achieve resounding success until 1999, with the international repercussion of Todo sobre mi madre, which won numerous awards around the world, including the first Oscar, in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. At this time, Almodóvar's disagreement with the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain began, when he stated, in 2003, that the academy had made a mistake by not selecting his Talk to her (2002) as a Spanish candidate to represent Spain at the Oscars. In the end, the Hollywood academy ruled out Los lunes al sol (2002), by Fernando León de Aranoa, as a finalist for the aforementioned category, and instead awarded the Oscar for best screenplay to Talk to her, and Almodóvar was also a candidate in the best director section.

However, the Goya awards in 2004 would once again go largely to the film The Sea Inside, by Alejandro Amenábar, and they left Bad Education without any.. Despite the fact that The Sea Inside won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, while Bad Education had a mixed reception from the public and critics, a year later Pedro Almodóvar and his brother Agustín would leave the Spanish academy, in disagreement with the current voting system and due to a certain animosity from academics towards their work.

Pedro Almodóvar and Penelope Cruz in the delivery of the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2006.

After the death of his mother, he recalled his childhood in Volver (2006), a film that represented a kind of "reconciliation" between Almodóvar and the Spanish film academy (he was awarded five Goya awards), as well as his reunion with the actress Carmen Maura. In addition, this work continued the trend of international success, both for him and for his main actress, Penélope Cruz, who along with the rest of the film's female cast was awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. He also received two other important national awards: the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2006 and the Terenci Moix Award in 2007.

Finally, at the 2010 Goya Awards Gala, on February 14, Almodóvar was presented by Rosa María Sardá and Andreu Buenafuente to present the award for best film. The surprise was huge, since no one attending the ceremony knew that he would attend, except for the presenter, and the president of the Academy, Álex de la Iglesia. With this, the reconciliation between Almodovar and the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain was staged. On January 10, 2012, the director was nominated for the Goya Awards for Best Film for The Skin I Live In.

He designed the poster for the 2019 New York Film Festival, in which he was also present with his film 'Dolor y Gloria'.

In 2022, he shot a short film, together with actors Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, entitled Strange way of life.

Filmography

Almodóvar's cinema cultivates a naturalism that destroys the usual bourgeois customs of Spanish cinema. On the contrary, it usually represents a marginal reality or that of the urban subproletariat and abounds in scandalous and provocative elements: corrupt policemen, drug use, abuse, prostitution, precocious children, philosophical rednecks, desperate wives, torn homosexuality, etc., all of this. without sacrificing his irreverent humor and without ceasing to provoke with unorthodox sex scenes, like the golden shower of his first 35 mm feature Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980).

His first film work Fuck, fuck, fuck me... Tim (1978), filmed in Super 8, is circumscribed within this punk style. This scandalous material could claim, as in the case of the surrealists, épater les bourgeois ("disturb the bourgeois"). Over time, however, he has refined his writing and developed increasingly sophisticated and colorful scripts, very close to the classic melodrama inspired by Douglas Sirk. In later films, such as Tie Me Up!, initially rated X in the United States (following this film, the North American classification NC-17 was born, also awarded to Bad Education), a woman falls in love with her kidnapper and even, according to some sectors of Spanish society, Kika even trivializes rape.

Pedro Almodóvar and Penelope Cruz at the Goya Awards in 2017

Among his sources of inspiration, almost always autobiographical, there are also abundant elements of Buñuelesque and anticlerical elements, such as black humor or the pedophile priest of La mala educación, or belonging to traditionalism, the culture of masses and avant-garde art. Almodóvar mixes the traditional and the transgressive in his films. His fondness for boleros, Chavela Vargas, Caetano Veloso, and in general for the most punk, Cutre Lux and transgressive aesthetics, based on the use of very bright and strongly contrasting colors, vulgar and degraded exteriors and violent disproportions, is characteristic. between human interpreters and the physical environments of buildings.

His experience as an actor and singer has made him an important actor's director, and as a screenwriter he concocts female characters and dramatic stories especially well. In Lynn Hirschberg's opinion, "Almodóvar presides over his changing characters like a benevolent priest: he accepts and forgives virtually all of them, no matter how terrible their sins. A kidnapper, a rapist or a pedophile can have a pure heart; of course, the seemingly innocent can also be guilty."

Stages of his work

Almodovar with Victoria April, at the César Awards in Paris in 1993.

Although analysts who are experts in Almodovari's work do not seem to agree, perhaps it is possible to classify his artistic work into four stages, although his cinema has such a coherence that we could only speak of one:

1. Pilot phase: Pepi, Luci, Bom and other girls in the lot, Labyrinth of passions, Between darkness, Trailer for lovers of the forbidden and What have I done to deserve this?
2. Stage of formal improvement: Killer, The law of desire, Women on the verge of a nerve attack, Attack me!, Far Tacons, Kika.
3. Social stage: The flower of my secret, Talk to her., Memory Trilogy: All about my mother, Carne trémula, Bad education.
4. Introspective stage: Back, Broken hugs, The skin that I dwell in, Passenger lovers, Juliet, Pain and Glory, Parallel mothers.

In his film Volver there is a reunion with his muse Carmen Maura, who plays the role of a "phantom grandmother" (film of the character Enrique Goded in Bad Education: hint-wink about the next film that Almodóvar was going to shoot).

In The flower of my secret, the writer Amanda Gris writes a story about a woman whose husband tries to rape their daughter and how the daughter kills him and the woman hides the body in the restaurant fridge. This argument would also return in the movie Volver, and was used previously in What have I done to deserve this?. The character of Ángel is a dramatization of Almodóvar himself, which would suggest that Amanda Gris gave Ángel the script for what later became the film Volver.

Also in La flor de mi secreto, Leo has a friend (Carmen Elías) who works at the transplant center. Nurse Manuela Kiti Manver acts in the training dramatizations of the doctors. That same role of the nurse Manuela is the one that Cecilia Roth would play years later in Todo sobre mi madre.

In The Law of Desire, Carmen Maura plays a transsexual who visits the priest who raised her as a child (she sang in the church choir), a plot that twenty years later becomes the backbone of La visita, a story that gives life to Bad Education.

In La mala educación the character of the film director (Enrique Goded), played by Fele Martínez, has a pseudobiographical approach, which suggests that it is an interpretation of Almodóvar himself. The character of Juan, played by Gael García Bernal, would refer to an actor who appeared in Almodóvar's first films, as explained at the end of the film. In La visita, which serves as the basis for Bad Education, the character of the priest is played by Daniel Giménez Cacho. The physical resemblance of this character in the film and that of Eusebio Poncela, who acted in The Law of Desire, suggests that the plot of Bad Education is actually the dramatization of a relationship between him and Almodóvar. At the end of La mala educación it is mentioned that the character of Juan actually represents an actor who later acted on television, which would fit with Imanol Arias, who acted in Labyrinth of passions and later he developed part of his career on the small screen.

In Broken Embraces, the story revolves around Girls and Suitcases, a film in which the protagonist is the director. The plot and characters of this film are those of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

In What have I done to deserve this? and in The Flower of My Secret, Chus Lampreave plays a grandmother who always says she wants to go back to her village native. In Volver he plays an aunt who is visited by her family in her town.

In Talk to her, during the concert with Caetano Veloso, Cecilia Roth and Marisa Paredes appear as extras, who respectively play the roles of Manuela and Huma Rojo in Todo sobre mi madre.

In Kika, the maid's brother, who was in prison, escapes and goes to look for her at her employer's house, where he gags her and rapes the protagonist of the film. A similar situation occurs in The Skin I Live In , when the fugitive brother of the main character gags the house maid (who is also her mother) and rapes the protagonist.

In Todo sobre mi madre, the Argentine singer Fito Páez appears as an extra.

In Julieta, stars Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte, and is based on three short stories inspired by the book Runaway ('Julieta', & 'Soon' and 'Silence') by Alice Munro. Julieta was the biggest commercial failure of all Almodóvar's filmography in her native Spain, Spain. However, the film achieved greater recognition in France, where it grossed twice the money within two weeks of opening, and surpassed the figures of The Passenger Lovers. On August 19, 2016, Julieta was shortlisted (along with La novia y El Olivo) by the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences to represent Spain in The Oscar Awards.

The film Pain and Glory was one of the Spanish films shortlisted to represent Spain at the 92nd edition of the Oscars in the category of 'Best Foreign Language Film& #39;.

Director's Titles

Actor Titles

• A: actor
• DG: director and screenwriter
• DGA: director, screenwriter and actor
• DGAM: director, screenwriter, actor and music

Funds

• Pepi, Luci, Bom and other girls in the lot (27 October 1980) (270.000€)
• Labyrinth of passions (29 September 1982) (590.000€)
• Between darkness (10 March 1983) (690.000€)
• What have I done to deserve this? (25 October 1984) (700.000€)
• Killer (7 March 1986) (710.000€)
• The law of desire (7 October 1987) (1,40,000€)
• Carne trémula (10 October 1987) (4.990,779€)
• Women on the verge of a nerve attack (25 March 1988) (7.019,052€)
• Attack me! (12 December 1989) (3.125,224€)
• Far Tacons (23 October 1991) (5,234,098€)
• Kika (29 October 1993) (3.038,616€)
• The flower of my secret (22 September 1995) (3.196,999€)
• All about my mother (8 April 1999) (9.962,767€)
• Talk to her. (15 March 2002) 6.208,711€)
• Back (10 March 2006) (10.243,096€)
• Broken hugs (18 March 2009) (4.141,781€)
• The skin that I dwell in (10 September 2011) (4.648,971€)
• Passenger lovers (8 March 2013) (5.071,455€)
• Bad education (19 March 2014) (6.110,254€)
• Julieta (8 April 2016) (2.202,779€)
• Pain and glory (22 March 2019) (5.927,601€)
• Parallel mothers (8 October 2021) (2.695,465€)

Collections correspond to your pass in Spain.

Recurring Contributors

Actors

Soundtrack

Photography

Assembly

Costume

Producer

Pedro Almodóvar in 1993.

Apart from his activity as a film director, Pedro Almodóvar is one of the most important Spanish producers: the company El Deseo, founded in 1985 together with his brother Agustín, has produced, in addition to his own films, those of directors like Álex de la Iglesia, Guillermo del Toro or Isabel Coixet.

His brother Agustín has managed to make El Deseo grow until placing it among the first in the country. in the world in the film industry magazine Hollywood Reporter, in 64th place, ahead of American film legends such as Robert Altman or Terrence Malick.

Titles

The following films were produced by Pedro Almodóvar and Agustín Almodóvar (El Deseo): Matador (1986), The Law of Desire (1987), Mujeres on the brink of a nervous breakdown (1988), Tie Me Up! (1989), High Heels (1991), Kika (1993), The Flower of My Secret (1995), Tremulous Flesh (1997), All About My Mother (1999), Talk to her (2002), Bad Education (2004), Volver (2006), Broken Embraces (2009), With:

Political militancy

Pedro Almodóvar was one of the most significant public figures against the invasion of Iraq and the Spanish government's support for the US in that matter, and he was, along with Fernando Fernán Gómez and Leonor Watling, in charge of reading the manifesto against the war and the government of José María Aznar in the massive demonstration (between 660,000 and 990,000 people) that took place in Madrid on February 15, 2003.

In 2004, after the March elections won by the PSOE, at the presentation of his film Bad Education, Almodóvar launched a harsh attack on the PP, declaring that it had returned to the democracy after "the torpor of these eight years". Days before the elections, the 11M attacks in Atocha had been perpetrated. Almodóvar suspended all the festivities for the film's presentation as soon as the news was released: "We have lived through very hard moments, with a lot of pain and that is why we decided to suspend everything festive, that is why we are not going to do the premiere gala or the after party". He also expressed his satisfaction with the triumph of the PSOE, but tempered by the sad events: "This terrible week has culminated with liberating news, a pity that we had to pay such a high price." He accused the PP government of manipulating information during those days: "The kidnapping and manipulation of information to which we were already accustomed, that darkness, is not democracy." And he echoed a rumor that was running through the Internet:

I'm going to say one thing that circulates now as a rumor and that if it is confirmed it can be terrifying, and it's that the PP was on the verge, Saturday at 12 o'clock, to provoke a coup d'etat. I don't want to be fine or delicate. It's not about throwing stones, but we have to see how the PP is gone. But at last, we are back in a democratic Spain where we can speak clear. It was the Spanish people who went out to the street to ask for information and that, fortunately, could not stop.

Rajoy described Almodóvar's words as "a colossal lie", said he felt "ashamed" that a compatriot could affirm such things, and went so far as to unsuccessfully file a lawsuit against the director.

In January 2008 he was one of the participants, along with other directors and actors, in the Support Platform for Zapatero. Almodóvar later stated that his support extends "to the entire left". Due to the promotion of his latest film Los amantes pasajeros , Almodóvar declared to XL Semanal : «Zapatero's second stage was a real disaster. Man, in his first years he did things, but... Let's see, I, like many people, supported Zapatero in 2008 to prevent the PP from coming to power. I made a mistake. How was I to know that this man would react like this to the crisis? Following the disappointment of Zapatero's second legislature, Pedro Almodóvar supported the left-wing party Unidos Podemos-Podemos on several occasions, both in the Madrid mayoral elections in 2015 (Ahora Madrid), where he was seen in a Manuela Carmena rally, as in the presidential elections. He was also one of the intellectuals from the world of culture who requested a popular unity candidacy for the elections on December 20, 2015. After those elections, he remains neutral and publicly and officially does not ask for the vote for any political party or candidacy.

Acknowledgment

On June 27, 2022, the eve of June 28, International LGBTI Pride Day, he was awarded a Rainbow Recognition, granted by the Spanish Ministry of Equality and the General Directorate of Sexual Diversity and LGTBI Rights, for his contribution, throughout his career, to the visibility of LGTBI diversity from positivity and leadership for more than 40 years.

Criticism

Conservative media have attacked Almodóvar in various ways. The defunct website La Nación reproached him for being “a spreader throughout the world of stereotypes with which we are identified throughout the world. Spain is a country of transvestites, homosexuals, junkies, hysterics,...", while relating their heritage to the subsidies their productions had received. In the same sense, the predecessor of La Nación, the weekly Epoca, headlined an article in October 2006: "Almodóvar makes gold with everyone's money." and Libertad Digital, on the occasion of the Almodóvar's participation in a rally of artists in favor of Rodríguez Zapatero, stated that Almodóvar's "assets" totaled 67 million euros and that his support for Zapatero had a "commercial interest" as a background: the digital canon. In addition to the large income that he must collect in this concept ».

Awards

Annual competitions

Oscar Awards

BAFTA Awards

Goya Awards

César Awards

David de Donatello Awards

Golden Globe Awards

Silver Condor Awards

Medals of the Film Writers Circle

Platinum Awards

Festivals

Cannes International Film Festival

Venice International Film Festival

Berlin International Film Festival

Bogotá Film Festival

Other acknowledgments

• National Film Prize (1990).
• Prince of Asturias Award for Arts (2006).
• Star on the Paseo de la Fama de Madrid (2011).
• Renoir Award of the Union of American Guionists. UU. (2015).
• Feroz Award of Honor (2023). [2]

Performances

Pedro Almodóvar has made small cameo appearances in various films. Among them, the following stand out:

• A man named Fall Flowerby Pedro Olea (1978).
• TattooBigas Luna (1979).
• Pepi, Luci, Bom and other girls in the lotby Pedro Almodóvar (1980).
• Labyrinth of passionsby Pedro Almodóvar (1982).
• What have I done to deserve this?by Pedro Almodóvar (1984).
• Killerby Pedro Almodóvar (1986).
• The law of desireby Pedro Almodóvar (1987).
• In bed with MadonnaAlek Keshishian (1991).