Pedro Almodóvar

Infobox Actor
name = Pedro Almodóvar

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caption = Almodóvar (left) with Penélope Cruz
birthname = Pedro Almodóvar Caballero
birthdate = birth date and age|1949|9|24
location = Calzada de Calatrava, Ciudad Real, Spain
occupation = Filmmaker
yearsactive = 1974 - present
academyawards = Best Foreign Language Film
1999 "All About My Mother"
Best Original Screenplay
2002 "Talk to Her"
baftaawards = Best Direction
1999 "All About My Mother"
Best Foreign Film
1999 "All About My Mother"
2002 "Talk to Her"
Best Original Screenplay
2002 "Talk to Her"
cesarawards = Best Foreign Film
1993 "High Heels"
2000 "All About My Mother"
Best European Union Film
2003 "Talk to Her"
Life Achievement Award (1999)
goyaawards = Best Original Screenplay
1989 "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown"
Best Director
2000 "All About My Mother"
2007 "Volver"

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (pronounced|ˈpeð̞ɾo almoˈð̞oβ̞̞aɾ kaβ̞aˈʝeɾo) (born September 24, 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.

Almodóvar is arguably the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. His films, marked by complex narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular songs, irreverent humor, strong colors and glossy décor. Desire, passion, family and identity are among Almodóvar’s most prevalent themes. His films enjoy a worldwide following and he has become a major figure on the stage of world cinema.

Early life

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero was born on September 24, 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain, a rural small town of Ciudad Real, a province of Castile-La Mancha in the administrative district of Almagro. La Mancha is the windswept region of flat lands made famous by Don Quijote. He was born as one of four children (two boys, two girls) in a large and impoverished family of peasant stock. His father, Antonio Almodóvar, who could barely read or write, worked most of his life hauling barrels of wine by mule. Almodóvar's mother, Francisca Caballero, turned her son into a part time teacher of literacy in the village and also a letter reader and transcriber for the neighbors. When Pedro was eight years old, the family sent him to study at a religious boarding school in the city of Cáceres, Extremadura, in the west of the country, with the hope that he might someday become a priest. His family eventually joined him in Cáceres, where his father opened a gas station and his mother opened a bodega where she sold her own wine. [ Pedro Almodóvar: D’Lugo, p. 13]

While Calzada did not have a cinema, the streets where he lived in Cáceres contained not only the school, but also a movie theater. [ A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar: Allinson, p. 7] . “ Cinema became my real education, much more than the one I received from the priest,” he said later in an interview [ Pedro Almodóvar: D’Lugo, p. 14] .

Almodóvar was influenced by such directors as Billy Wilder, Douglas Sirk, Alfred Hitchcock, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Luis Buñuel, Edgar Neville, Federico Fellini, Luis García Berlanga and neorealist Marco Ferreri.

Against his parents' wishes, Pedro Almodóvar moved to Madrid in 1967. His goal was to be a film director, but he lacked the economic means to do it and besides, Franco had just closed the National School of Cinema so he would be completely self-taught. To support himself, Almodóvar worked a number of odd jobs, including a stint selling used items in the famous Madrid flea market El Rastro. He eventually found full-time employment with Spain's national phone company, Telefonica, where he worked for twelve years as an administrative assistant. Since he worked only until three in the afternoon, he had the rest of the day to pursue his own interests.

Beginnings

In the early seventies, Almodóvar grew interested in experimental cinema and theatre. He collaborated with the vanguard theatrical group, Los Goliardos, where he played his first professional roles and met Carmen Maura. He was also writing comics and contributing articles and stories to a number of counterculture magazines, such as Star, Víbora and Vibraciones.

Madrid’s flourishing alternative cultural scene became the perfect scenario for Almodóvar's social talents. He was a crucial figure in La Movida Madrileña (Madriliene Movement), a cultural renaissance that followed the fall of the Franco regime. Alongside Fabio McNamara, Almodóvar sang in a glam rock parody duo. He published a novella, "Fuego en las entrañas" ("Fire in the Guts"). Writing under the pseudonym "Patty Diphusa" , he penned various articles for major newspapers and magazines, such as "El País, Diario 16" and "La Luna". He kept writing stories that were eventually published in a compilation volume, "El sueño de la razón".

Short films

Around 1974, Almodóvar began making his first short films on a Super-8 camera. By the end of the 1970s they were shown in Madrid's night circuit and in Barcelona. These shorts had overtly sexual narratives and no soundtrack: "Dos putas, o, Historia de amor que termina en boda" (1974) ("Two Whores, or, A Love Story that Ends in Marriage"); "La caída de Sodoma" (1975)("The Fall of Sodom"); "Homenaje" (1976)("Homage"); "La estrella" (1977)("The Star") 1977 "Sexo Va: Sexo viene" ("Sex Comes and Goes") (Super-8); "Complementos" (shorts) 1978; (16mm).

“I showed them in bars, at parties… I could not add a soundtrack because it was very difficult. The magnetic strip was very poor, very thin. I remember that I became very famous in Madrid because, as the films had no sound, I took a cassette with music while I personally did the voices of all the characters, songs and dialogues.” [ Almodóvar Secreto: Cobos and Marias, p. 76- 78] . After four years of working with shorts in Super-8 format, in 1978 Almodóvar made his first Super-8, full-length film: "Folle, folle, fólleme, Tim" (1978) ("Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Tim"), a magazine style melodrama. In addition, he made his first 16 mm short, "Salome". This was his first contact with the professional world of cinema [ A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar: Allinson, p. 9] . The film's stars, Carmen Maura and Felix Rotaeta, encouraged him to make his first feature film in 16 mm and helped him raise the money to finance what would be "Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón".

Almodóvar is openly gay, [web cite |url=http://www.time.com/time/europe/hero2005/almodovar.html|title=Acceptance one reel at a time|publisher=Time.com] and he has incorporated elements of underground and gay culture into mainstream forms with wide crossover appeal, thus redefining perceptions of Spanish cinema and Spain. [ Film: Bergan, p. 252]

Film career

"Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap" (1980)

Almodóvar made his first feature film, "Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap" ("Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón"), in 1980 with a very low budget and a team of volunteers shooting on weekends. The film was based on his photo-novella, "General Erections", previously published in the magazine "El Víbora" ("The Viper"). "Pepi, Luci, Bom…" consists of a series of loosely connected sketches rather than a fully formed plot. It follows the adventures of the three characters of the title: Pepi, who wants revenge from the corrupt policeman who raped her; Luci, a mousy, masochistic housewife; and Bom, a lesbian punk rock singer. The central theme of the film, friendship and female solidarity, appear repeatedly in Almodóvar’s filmography.

The film was plagued by financial and technical problems. However, Almodóvar would look back fondly to his first film: "Pepi, Luci, Bom… is a film full of defects. When a film has only one or two, it is considered an imperfect film, while when there is a profusion of technical flaws, it is called style. That’s what I said joking around when I was promoting the film, but I believe that that was closer to the truth" [ Pedro Almodóvar: D’Lugo, p. 19] .

The film captured the spirit of the times – above all the sense of cultural and sexual freedom – and established Almodóvar as an "agent provocateur". With its many Kitsch elements, campy style, outrageous humor, and explicit sexuality (there is a famous golden shower scene in the middle of a knitting lesson), the film amassed a cult following. It toured the independent circuits and then spent four years on the late night showing of the Alphaville Theater in Madrid which provided the funds for Almodóvar's second film.

"Labyrinth of Passions" (1982)

"Labyrinth of Passions" ("Laberinto de Pasiones") is a screwball comedy about multiple identities, one of Almodóvar’s favorite subjects. The plot follows the adventures of two sex-crazy characters: Sexilia, an aptly named nymphomaniac, and Riza, the gay son of the leader of a fictional Middle Eastern country, who are meant to be together. The campy roundelay also involves Queti, Sexilia’s “biggest fan,” whose delusional father rapes her. The film caught the spirit of liberation which then ruled in Madrid and it became a cult film. [ Almodóvar on Almodóvar: Strauss, p. 28] Almodóvar said about "Laberinto de Pasiones": " I like the film even if it could have been better made. The main problem is that the story of the two leads is much less interesting than the stories of all the secondary characters. But precisely because there are so many secondary characters, there's a lot in the film I like " [ Almodóvar on Almodóvar: Strauss, p. 28] .

"Dark Habits" (1983)

"Dark Habits" ("Entre Tinieblas") heralded a change in tone to somber melodrama with comic elements. This film has an almost all-female cast featuring many of Almodóvar's favorite leading ladies: Carmen Maura, Julieta Serrano, Marisa Paredes and Chus Lampreave. The narrative centers upon a cabaret singer, who, running away from justice, finds refuge in a convent of destitute nuns, each of whom explores a different sin. The mother superior, a drug addict worse than the fallen woman trying to redeem, falls in love with the singer.

The film is a satire of Spain's religious institutions, portraying spiritual desolation and moral bankruptcy. "Dark Habits" explores the force of desire in characters who are ruled by their intuition rather than reason. This is also Almodóvar’s first film in which he clearly uses popular music to express emotion: in a pivotal scene, the mother superior and her protégé sing along with Lucho Gatica’s "bolero": "Encadenados" ("Chained together").

"Dark Habits" was a modest success, and cemented Almodóvar’s reputation as the "enfant terrible" of the Spanish cinema.

"What Have I Done to Deserve This?" (1984)

Almodóvar's next film, "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" ("¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?") was inspired by the Spanish black comedies of the late 50s and early 60s. It is the tale of a struggling housewife and her dysfunctional family: her abusive husband, who works as a taxi driver; her oldest son, a heroin dealer; the youngest son, a hustler; and the grandmother who hates the city and just wants to return to her rural village.

The theme of the downtrodden housewife coping with the travails of everyday life arise repeatedly in the director's work, as do other issues of female independence and solidarity. "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" is also a critique on consumerism and patriarchal culture. In one scene, the housewife trades her own son so she doesn't have to pay a dentist bill, and in another the only witness of a crime is a lizard, aptly named “Money”.

"What Have I Done to Deserve This?" was more successful than Almodóvar’s previous films and became his first with international distribution.

"Matador" (1986)

Almodóvar's subsequent films deepened his exploration of sexual desire and the sometimes brutal laws governing it. "Matador" is a dark, complex story that centers on the relationship between a former bullfighter and a murderous female lawyer, both of whom can only experience sexual fulfillment in conjunction with killing. The film offered up desire as a bridge between sexual attraction and death.

Matador drew away from the naturalism and humor of the director’s previous work into a deeper and darker terrain. Almodóvar established the interrelation between sexuality and violence as seen in his cinematographic quotation of the final sequence from King Vidor’s "Duel in the Sun". The violent elements of the film caused some controversy. Almodóvar justified his use of violence explaining "The moral of all my films is to get to a stage of greater freedom." Almodóvar went on to note, "I have my own morality. And so do my films. If you see Matador through the perspective of traditional morality, it's a dangerous film because it's just a celebration of killing. Matador is like a legend. I don't try to be realistic; it's very abstract, so you don't feel identification with the things that are happening, but with the sensibility of this kind of romanticism" [ Pedro Almodóvar: D’Lugo, p.96 ] .

"Law of Desire" (1987)

Almodóvar solidified his creative independence when he started the production company El Deseo, together with his brother Agustín, who has also had several cameo roles in his films. From 1986 on, Pedro Almodóvar has produced his own films.

The first movie that came out from El Deseo was the aptly named "Law of Desire" ("La Ley del Deseo"). The film has an operatically tragic plot line and is one of Almodóvar’s richest and most disturbing movies. The narrative follows three main characters: a gay film director who embarks on a new project; his sister, an actress who used to be his brother (played by Carmen Maura), and a repressed murderously obsessive stalker (played by Antonio Banderas).

The film presents a gay love triangle and drew away from most representations of homosexuals in films. These characters are neither coming out nor confront sexual guilt or homophobia; they are already liberated, like the homosexuals in Fassbinder’s films. Almodóvar said about "Law of Desire" : " It's the key film in my life and career. It deals with my vision of desire, something that's both very hard and very human. By this I mean the absolute necessity of being desired and the fact that in the interplay of desires it's rare that two desires meet and correspond" Strauss, Frederic, " Almodóvar on Almodóvar", pg 68]

Almodóvar's films rely heavily on the capacity of his actors to pull through difficult roles into a complex narrative. In "Law of Desire" Carmen Maura plays the role of Tina, a woman who used to be a man. Almodóvar explains: "Carmen is required to imitate a woman, to savour the imitation, to be conscious of the kitsch part that there is in the imitation, completely renouncing parody, but not humour". [ Pedro Almodóvar: D’Lugo, p. 57] .

Elements from "Law of Desire" grew into the basis for two later films: Carmen Maura appears in a stage production of Cocteau’s "The Human Voice", which inspired Almodóvar’s next film, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown"; and Tina's confrontation scene with an abusive priest formed a partial genesis for "Bad Education".

"Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" (1988)

Almodóvar’s next film was his first huge international success: "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" ("Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios"), a feminist light comedy that further established Almodóvar as a "women's director" like George Cukor and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Almodóvar has said that women make better characters: “women are more spectacular as dramatic subjects, they have a greater range of registers, etc.” [ Almodóvar Secreto: Cobos and Marias, p. 100]

The film, staged as a faux adaptation of a theatrical work, details a two-day period in the life of Pepa, a professional movie dubber who has been abruptly abandoned by her married lover and who frantically tries to track him down. In the course of her search she discovers some of his secrets, and realizes her true feelings.

Inspired by Hollywood comedies of the 1950s, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" became the stepping stone for Pedro Almodóvar's later work. This light comedy of rapid-fire dialogue and fast-paced action remains one of Almodóvar’s most accessible films (with no drugs or sex). The film received public and critical acclaim worldwide, and brought Almodóvar to the attention of American audiences. "Women" was showered with many awards, and received an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film.

"Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" (1990)

Almodóvar's next film marked the breaking-off with his reference actress, Carmen Maura, and the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with another great actress of Spanish and European cinema: Victoria Abril. "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" ("¡Átame!") was also the director's fourth and most important collaboration with Antonio Banderas. In "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!", Ricky (played by Antonio Banderas), a recently released psychiatric patient, kidnaps and holds hostage an actress (played by Victoria Abril) in order to make her fall in love with him. “I’m 23 years old, I have fifty thousand pesetas and I am alone in the world. I will try to be a good husband for you and a good father for your children,” he tells her. [ Almodóvar in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!]

Rather than populate the film with many characters, as in his previous films, here the story focuses on the compelling relationship at its center: the actress and her kidnapper literally struggling for power and desperate for love. The film’s title line "¡Tie Me Up!" is unexpectedly uttered by the actress as a genuine request. She does not know if she will try to escape or not, and when she realizes she has feelings for her captor, she prefers not to be given a chance.

In spite of some dark elements, "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" can be described as a romantic comedy, and the director's most clear love story, with a plot similar to William Wyler's thriller, "The Collector". Nevertheless, the film was the subject of heated debate; it was decried by feminists and women's advocacy groups for what they perceived as the film's sadomasochist undertones. Its U.S. release was marked by further scandal and controversy. The Motion Picture Association of America, which determines film ratings in the U.S., marginalized its distribution with the stigma of an 'X'. Backed by the film's distribution company, Miramax, Almodóvar filed a lawsuit, resulting in a stubborn legal battle. The result of it was the birth of a new rating, NC17, applicable to those films of explicit nature previously regarded unfairly as pornographic.

"Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!", which did not enjoy the wide acclaim of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", rather had a negative reception among some Spanish critics, who declared that Almodóvar had lost his sense of direction; similar criticism was leveled at his two subsequent films.

"High Heels" (1991)

The family melodrama "High Heels" ("Tacones Lejanos") is built around the fractured relationship between a self-involved mother, a famous torch song singer, and the grown daughter she abandoned as a child, who works as TV newscaster. The daughter has married her mother's ex-lover and has befriended a female impersonator of her mother. Popular songs, always a key element in Almodóvar’s work, are never more present than in this film full of "boleros". "High Heels" also contains an unexpected prison yard dance sequence.

The film has the feel of other mother-daughter melodramas like "Stella Dallas", "Mildred Pierce", "Imitation of Life" and particularly "Autumn Sonata", which is quoted directly in the film. "High Heels" was an interpretative tour de force for two essential actresses of the "Almodovarian universe": Marisa Paredes and Victoria Abril.

"Kika" (1993)

After the melodramatic intensity of "High Heels", Almodóvar took another sudden turn in his career by shooting one of his most unclassifiable movies: "Kika", a choral film where each character belongs to a different film genre, thus generating a very free and heterodox movie. The plot centers on Kika, a clueless but good-hearted make-up artist involved with an older expatriate American writer and his bewildered stepson. A vampy, oddball television reporter who is constantly in search of sensational stories follows Kika's misadventures.

"Kika" is a critique of mass media, particularly its sensationalism. Here Almodóvar gives a cameo role to his real life elderly mother, Francisca Caballero, who plays an ill-qualified hostess of a literary T.V program. She reads badly and not much as her eyesight is bad, but she explains to the audience that she has been given her job as presenter by her son, the director (a self-reflexive Almodóvar), so that mother and son can spend time together.

"Kika" created a certain amount of controversy in the United States thanks to a humorous rape scene that was perceived as being both misogynistic and exploitative. The film was not well received by critics, but opened the door to a new era in the director’s career.

"The Flower of My Secret" (1995)

Almodóvar changed gears with his next effort, 1995's "The Flower of My Secret" ("La flor de mi secreto"). It is an exploration of denial in its various forms, a film in which melodrama is treated more as theme rather than as plot line. "The Flower of My Secret" is the story of Leo Macias, a successful romance writer who has to confront both a professional and personal crisis. Estranged from her husband, a military officer who has volunteered for an international peacekeeping role in Bosnia and Herzegovina to avoid her, Leo fights to hold on to a past that has already eluded her, not realizing she has already set her future path by her own creativity and by supporting the creative efforts of others.

Starring Almodóvar regular Marisa Paredes, this psychological drama was hailed as his most mature film to date, and remains one of the director's humblest films. Leaving Almodóvar's usual choral exercises aside, the story centered on the love-torn writer. "The Flower of My Secret" has many common elements with "All About My Mother" and "Talk to Her". The three films are about “loss, growth and recovery” [ Pedro Almodóvar: D’Lugo, p. 103] .

"The Flower of my Secret" heralded a change in Almodóvar's filmography to a more mature period. It is the transitional film between his earlier and later style.

"Live Flesh" (1997)

Almodóvar has written all of his films, but with "Live Flesh" ("Carne trémula") the director shared script writing credits. This was his first--and so far only--script adapted from a book, Ruth Rendell’s novel "Live Flesh". All that remains in the film from the book is the plot line of the two male protagonists [: "Almodóvar: labyrinths of Passion: Edwards, Gwyne ] : David, a police detective, and Víctor, the man accused of wounding and paralyzing him. Upon his release, Víctor, looking for revenge, is soon entangled in the lives not only of David and his wife, but also of David’s former partner, Sancho, and Sancho’s wife.

"Live Flesh" explores love, loss, and suffering with a sober restraint only briefly glimpsed in the director's earlier work. The film tells the story of several characters implicated in each other's fates in ways that are beyond their control. "Live Flesh" is historically framed from 1970, when Franco declared a state of emergency, to 1996, when Spain had completely shaken off the restrictions of the Franco regime.

"All About My Mother" (1999)

Almodóvar then continued to work in more serious dramatic confines, directing "All About My Mother" ("Todo sobre mi madre"). The film grew out of a brief scene in "The Flower of My Secret," telling the story of a mourning mother who, after reading the last entry in her dead son's journal about how he wishes to meet his father for the first time, decides to travel to Barcelona in search of the boy's father. She must tell the father that she had their son after she left him many years ago, and that he has now died. Once there, she encounters a number of odd characters - a transvestite prostitute, a pregnant nun, and a lesbian actress - all of whom help her cope with her grief.

The film revisited Almodóvar's familiar themes of the power of sisterhood and of family. Dedicated to Bette Davis, Romy Schneider and Gena Rowlands, "All About My Mother" is steeped in theatricality, from its backstage setting to its plot, modeled on the works of Federico Garcia Lorca and Tennessee Williams, to the characters' preoccupation with modes of performance.

The comic relief on the film centers on Agrado, a pre-operative transsexual. In one scene, she tells the story of her body and its relationship to plastic surgery and silicone, culminating with a statement of her own philosophy: “The more you become like what you have dreamed for yourself, the more authentic you are”. [ Pedro Almodóvar, All About my Mother]

"All About My Mother" received more awards and honors than any other film in the Spanish motion picture industry. [ Pedro Almodóvar: D’Lugo, p. 105] Its recognition includes an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, a Golden Globe in the same category, Best Director Award and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury Award at Cannes; the French Cesar for Best Foreign Film, the Goya Award as best film of the year, best Actress in a Leading Role for Argentine actress Cecilia Roth and a twelfth Annual European Film Award. [ Pedro Almodóvar: D’Lugo, p. 105]

"Talk to Her" (2002)

Two years later, Almodóvar hit another career high with "Talk to Her" ("Hable con ella"). The film revolves around two men who become friends while taking care of the comatose women they love. Their lives flow in all directions, past, present and future, pulling them towards an unsuspected destiny. Combining elements of modern dance and silent filmmaking with a narrative that embraces coincidence and fate, Almodóvar plots the lives of his characters, thrown together by unimaginably bad luck, towards an unexpected conclusion.

The film was hailed by critics and embraced by arthouse audiences. Almodóvar won numerous honors across the world for his film, including a French César for Best Film and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

"Bad Education" (2004)

Almodóvar followed two worldwide cinematic successes with "Bad Education" ("La mala educación"), a richly baroque tale of child sexual abuse and mixed identities. Two children, Ignacio and Enrique, discover love, cinema and fear in a religious school at the start of the 1960s. Father Manolo, the school principal and their literature teacher, is witness to and part of these discoveries. The three characters meet twice again, at the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s, or so it seems.

Almodóvar used elements of film noir, borrowing in particular from "Double Indemnity". The film's protagonist, Juan, was modeled largely on Patricia Highsmith’s most famous character, Tom Ripley, [ Pedro Almodóvar: D’Lugo, p. 117] as played by Alain Delon in René Clément's "Purple Noon". A criminal without scruples, but with an adorable face that betrays nothing of his true nature. Almodóvar explains : " He also represents a classic film noir character - the femme fatale. Which means that when other characters come into contact with him, he embodies fate, in the most tragic and noir sense of the word" Strauss, Frederic, " Almodóvar on Almodóvar", pg 212 ]

"Volver" (2006)

Almodóvar’s 16th film, "Volver" ("Return"), is set in part in La Mancha (the director’s native region). The film opens showing dozens of women furiously scrubbing the graves of their deceased, establishing the influence of the dead over the living as a key theme. The plot follows the story of three generations of women in the same family who survive wind, fire, and even death. The film is an ode to female resilience, where men are literally disposable. Many of Almodóvar's stylistic hallmarks are present: the stand-alone song (a redemption of the argentinian tango song "Volver"), references to reality TV, and an homage to classic film (in this case Luchino Visconti's "Bellissima").

"Volver" started as a story of "la España negra," or 'black Spain'--the rural, superstitious and conservative part of the country still often associated, the director says, with violence, tragedy, even backwardness: "It looks like they are living a century before. But I tried to demonstrate that the same Spain, in the same local places with the same local characters, could be called 'white Spain', because the neighbors are in complete solidarity, all the women join together and create a kind of family. The movie really talks about women who survive, women who fight fiercely. [www.sonyclassics.com/volver/main.html]

The storyline of "Volver" appears as both a novel and movie script in Almodóvar’s earlier film, "The Flower of My Secret".

Future Projects

"Volver", Almodóvar explains, "concludes the films I have made about women’s universe and the type of families that have moved from rural areas to the capital in search of prosperity. Therefore, it ends a cycle." [ Con 'Volver' culmina mi cine sobre el universo femenino: Maribel Marin , Diario El Pais, Madrid 30/01/2007]

His next film, "Broken Hugs" (Abrazos Rotos), will be a new collaboration with his favorite actress of recent years, Penélope Cruz. [ [http://www.timeout.com/film/features/show-feature/3985/] "Almodóvar offers 'Broken Hugs'" Time Out London]

Filmography

Notes

"Bibliography"

* Allinson, Mark: " A Spanish Labyrinth : The Films of Pedro Almodóvar", I.B Tauris Publishers, 2001, ISBN 1-86064-507 - 0
* Bergan, Ronald " Film", D.K Publishing, 2006, ISBN 0756622034
* Cobos, Juan and Miguel Marias: "Almodóvar Secreto", Nickel Odeon, 1995
* D’ Lugo, Marvin: "Pedro Almodóvar", University of Illinois Press, 2006, ISBN 0-252-073614 - 4
* Edwards, Gwyne, : "Almodóvar: labyrinths of Passion." London: Peter Owen. 2001, ISBN 0720611210
* Strauss, Frederick " Almodóvar on Almodóvar", Faber and Faber, 2006, ISBN 0-57123-192-6

External links

* [http://www.vivapedro.com Viva Pedro] Official website of the Viva Pedro series, featuring the theatrical re-release of 8 of the celebrated auteur's films.
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* [http://www.pedroalmodovar.es Official website] includes comments on many of his movies and a diary on the making of his new one, "Volver"
* [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/almodovar.html Almodóvar Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)]
* [http://www.portalmundos.com/mundocine/directores/pedroalmodovar.htm Biography of Pedro Almodóvar] MundoCine (in Spanish)
* [http://www.pajiba.com/the-films-of-pedro-almodavar.htm Pedro Almodóvar's Complete Filmography, Reviewed]
* [http://moviegrande.com/volver Pedro Almodóvar & Volver] Full production notes, images and many more on Volver.
* [http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=58182 All about Almodóvar's women (and men)] An article from Turkish Daily News

Persondata
NAME= Almodóvar, Pedro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES= Caballero, Pedro Almodóvar
SHORT DESCRIPTION= filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH= 1949-9-24
PLACE OF BIRTH= Calzada de Calatrava ESP
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=