Popcorn Kernels: Vote For Pedro

It's my only friend, the end! After these three mini-reviews of his more obscure 90's work, we will finally be finished with our long-running retrospective on the filmography of Pedro Almodóvar! (Full disclosure, two of these reviews were written about a year and a half ago. It took... a while to finally motivate myself to watch Kika, perhaps the only movie of his that literally nobody has a good word to say about.)

High Heels

Year: 1991
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, Miguel Bosé
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A news anchor's estranged actress mother returns after 10 years, and they both become embroiled in a murder investigation when her husband - her mother's ex - winds up dead.

There's melodrama and then there's Almodóvar melodrama. And then there's High Heels. An operatically tragic affair, every other scene features or or both of the lead actresses' eyes brimming with tears (the first being Marisa Paredes, anchor of The Flower of My Secret and All About My Mother, returning to his ensemble for the first time after Dark Habits; the second being Victoria Abril, his rebound muse after Carmen Maura's departure, who was fresh off his previous effort Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!). The labyrinthine plot twists and turns at every opportunity, full of unexpected reveals and simpering heartache.

OK not every reveal is unexpected, one of them being rendered entirely predictable by the presence of a hilariously fake beard, but I'm pretty sure we're supposed to notice that.

But I digress (as you're probably aware if you've read more than one of my reviews). Coming on the (pun absolutely intended) heels of a decade of work dominated primarily by comedies, High Heels was the beginning of Almodóvar's transformation from Madrid punk wild child to respected international filmmaker. it's not an entirely smooth transition. This is the first of two films co-produced with a French studio whose process wouldn't end up gelling with him, and it's marked by a handful of flaws.

To be fair, these flaws do stem entirely from Almodóvar himself: the first a tendency to linger far too long on non-plot progressing musical numbers. This would work well in his future works (and in fact did so in Law of Desire four years earlier), but the plot is so bare bones that it can't withstand the diversion. There is still an inordinate amount of style in the way High Heels is shot (especially its red-heavy color palette), but it is not so inundated with pure cinema craft that it can take a break to rejoice in the pure act of creation in the way that the much more confident Volver can.

The second, less invasive, flaw is the cast, which sees Almodóvar still reeling from the loss of Carmen Maura. And now her male counterpart Antonio Banderas has also left the scene (he dropped out of High Heels for his role in 1992's The Mambo Kings). The director just doesn't seem to know what to make of his leads (minus the reliably excellent Marisa Paredes), and though Miguel Bosé and especially Victoria Abril give very fine performances, they lack that ineffable spark that defines most of Almodóvar's leads, even one-time players like Bad Education's Gael García Bernal.

But that said, High Heels is still capable of great heights. The comic bit with a sign language interpreter is excellent, and a joyous moment of dance in a women's prison numbers among the director's most delightful - if inexplicable - scenes. High Heels is a beautiful melodrama with a gripping plot and a unique sensibility, even if it's occasionally a bit lethargic. How anyone could complain about that I do not know, though I understand why this is one of the less revered works in the director's filmography.

Rating: 6/10

Kika

Year: 1993
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Peter Coyote, Verónica Forqué, Victoria Abril
Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

An upbeat cosmetologist must weather affairs, a voyeur, a serial killer, a rapist, and an evil television announcer in a very fateful week.

Kika was in very many ways a transitional film for Almodóvar. It was the first time he would ever work with an American actor - Peter Coyote - and it was also the last. The ties to his regular ensemble of actors are extremely loose - of the notable people who worked with him multiple times, it's pretty much only Rossy De Palma, who does get her first truly meaty role with him here - and this was the last time he would make a film featuring temp muse Victoria Abril.

Abril, who had a small uncredited role in Law of Desire before leading Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and High Heels and taking a sizable supporting role in Kika, never managed to produce truly extraordinary work with the man, who was in his most artistically uncertain period following the departure of Carmen Maura from his stable of reliable performers. She's a totally capable and extremely game actress, I don't mean to blame her. But she wasn't what he needed at the time, and it's telling that his very next film The Flower of My Secret would lean heavily on the miraculous Marisa Paredes and the subsequent Live Flesh would spark his relationship with Penélope Cruz and finally add another huge star to his firmament.

While I absolutely wouldn't say Kika was his worst film (for my money, some of his rougher early works just don't quite find their way), it's certainly the nadir of the pretty much uninterrupted string of cinematic triumphs that began with 1987's Law of Desire. Its narrative messiness is a little closer to the shapeless blob of Matador than his more artistically esoteric later works, positioning Peter Coyote as co-lead provides a huge emotional black hole (he just doesn't seem to care about anything going on here), and the film is tinged with a palpable bitterness that translated to a direly low box office pull everywhere but France (take from that what you will).

In spite of that, however, Kika does have its moments of brilliance. Kika's apartment, the location where about 60% of the film takes place, is a perfectly Almodóvarian haven of bright colors that is perfectly complemented by sassy, eye-searing Jean Paul Gaultier costumes. Victoria Abril's character (a TV shock jock who calls herself "Scarface") is f**king bizarre, but her costumes are a stroke of twisted genius - she is frequently dressed in a full body catsuit with a camera affixed to a helmet, and two cutouts for her breasts which also act as lamps. It's deeply insane, in the best Almodóvar fashion.

Speaking of... His kinkiness and demented comedy reach their most controversial peak in Kika during a scene that is hard to parse out in 2019. I'll be frank about it: It positions a rape sequence as a busy farce. I think it's pretty clear he's making a statement about how women are treated in European society at the time (a later line about "Women are being raped every day, today it happened to be me" cements this idea for me), but a viewer's mileage with this will absolutely vary. To be clear, the rape absolutely isn't a joke, it's the women's calm, almost bored and quotidian reactions to it. That said, it's an extremely tightly wound comic scene that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the film, perhaps unfortunately.

Anyway... Remember what I said about Kika being kind of a bitter, nasty film? It's definitely an outlier in the Almodóvar canon, because even though it aesthetically fits in with the rest of his works, there's a fatigue here that isn't present even in his most recent works, created as a sexagenarian. I wouldn't recommend it to any first-timer approaching his work. In fact, I'm glad I saved it for last. I think the more context you have for his career, the more you'll appreciate it. Otherwise, focusing on the ones you've heard of instead is probably the best course of action.

Rating: 6/10

Live Flesh

Year: 1997
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Liberto Rabal, Francesca Neri, Javier Bardem
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

An ex-con attempts to insert himself into the relationship of two of his victims.

Live Flesh is maybe the most straightforward melodrama Pedro Almodóvar has ever made. I guess that's not saying much, considering that it features three time jumps spanning 26 years, a complicated web of revenge sex, and literally every character points a gun at at least one other character. But it's at least linear, with one event directly informing the next, and that's a luxury you shouldn't thumb your nose at.

Because it's so linear, it's also a teensy bit predictable, but that's the only patch on what's otherwise a completely stunning, typically twisted tale of lust, blood, and betrayal. Live Flesh's tantalizing storyline is brought to lurid life by Almodóvar's inimitable style, which had finally kicked into high gear after a brief mid-90's decline (he had to build up speed before making All About My Mother, I suppose). Come to think of it, in a lot of ways Live Flesh feels like the director is pressing the reset button.

While he is exercising his visual prowess with renewed vigor (he captures the streets of Madrid with a  delightful symmetry, finding unique shapes through which to tell his story - whether they be the harsh rectangle of a city bus, the inviting circle of a blessing wreath of flowers, or the repeating star motif), he has also chosen a cast of conspicuously unfamiliar faces. Every Almodóvar film pulls from his established ensemble of actors for at least two or three roles (usually more), but the only member of Live Flesh's cast he had ever worked with before was Javier Bardem, who held a small role in High Heels so negligible you wouldn't have noticed him if he wasn't now incredibly famous.

Of course, that doesn't mean he wouldn't work with these people again (hell, this is the film where he found Penélope Cruz, his second greatest muse), but for all intents and purposes this cast gave him an entirely new sandbox to work in, as his career progressed forward into its more Oscar-worthy stretch. None of them reach the peak of what an Almodóvar ensemble can accomplish, but they're all nevertheless game for the task.

Really, the most striking thing about Live Flesh is how overtly political it is. Although I certainly don't have a thorough enough grounding in Spanish politics to have all the context I need, the film is very clearly an indictment of the regime of the dictatorial King Franco, as well as a depiction of the insidious way it poisoned the lives of those who lived under it. It's also an exuberant celebration for the freedom of modern Spain, so passionate that anyone who doesn't have a scrap of geopolitical understanding could still feel its warmth.

A captivating story with political fervor is exactly what I want from a film, so I greatly enjoyed Live Flesh. It suffers a little from its more anonymous cast, but I wouldn't even have noticed if I wasn't as terrifyingly deep into the man's filmography as I surely am. It's a gorgeous, terrific film that is also one of his more easily accessible works, so I recommend it to veterans and newcomers alike.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1908

Popcorn Kernels: La Movida

As our Almodóvar marathon draws ever nearer to its conclusion, let’s review three consecutive films from his early period, roughshod works born from La Movida: the progressive Spanish punk scene that formed in Madrid following the death of the dictatorial, conservative King Franco.

Labyrinth of Passion

Year: 1982

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Cecilia Roth, Imanol Arias, Helga Liné 

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A gay Tehrani prince and a nymphomaniac rock starlet fall in love within the hustle and bustle of Madrid, surrounded by interlocking stories of passion, sex, and rock ‘n roll.

Just two years after his messy but promising debut with Pepi, Luci, Bom, Pedro Almodóvar proved with Labyrinth of Passion that his early period of trial and error would be like no other. Although he wouldn’t achieve true greatness until 1987’s Law of Desire, all the ingredients that he would use throughout his career can be found in Labyrinth.

The absurd kinkiness delivered with a casual shrug that defines most of the director’s best works is at full bore here, with the farcical plot twisting around pharmaceutically-induced incest, a hilariously hard-up psychoanalyst, and a beachside flashback that in one fell swoop delivers upon two characters their nymphomania, daddy issues, and homosexuality, with the implication that a bunch of kids are about to have an orgy. It’s ribald. It’s excessive. It’s La Movida.

Although the plot is certainly more lucid and coherent than Pepi, Luci, Bom, Labyrinth takes frequent breaks from juggling its sixteen or so characters to indulge in a prolonged exploration of the fashion and music of Almodóvar’s Madrid (including two extended cameos of the director himself, alongside musical collaborator Fanny McNamara) Frankly, it’s not compelling filmmaking, but it’s a fascinating cultural document that helps you understand exactly where the man and his unique approach to cinema came from.

But even if it’s not on a whole one of his masterworks, Labyrinth of Passion shows an astonishing vertical leap in Almodóvar’s sense of style. Although his increased budget was still relatively small, he found much more freedom in creating a universe filled with bold colors and retro pop art designs. It’s a beautiful-looking movie, bursting fully formed from the visual imagination of an aesthetic genus.

And it’s damn funny. Almodóvar’s fast-talking, effortlessly cool characters deliver incredibly clever dialogue as if it were the easiest thing in the world. It’s a loving, hilarious portrait of a world burgeoning with life, and even though it’s still a bit slapdash and all-over-the-place, it’s a wonderful showcase of exactly what the young director was capable of.

Rating: 7/10

Dark Habits

Year: 1983

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Cristina Sánchez Pascual, Will More, Laura Cepeda 

Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A heroin-addicted nightclub singer takes refuge in a convent, which is run by nuns who turn out to be just as sinful as she is.

Dark Habits contains the seeds of just about everything that would come to define Almodóvar’s alter work. Absurdly casual kink and blasphemy, loosely scripted melodrama with a pinch of ironic comedy and an enclosed world dominated by a group of diverse women.

It even features many key players who would come to define his key ensemble: Consummate cranky mother Chus Lampreave (as Sister Rat, who secretly writes porn in her spare time), 80’s muse Carmen Maura (as the bongo-playing Sister Damned, who cares for the convent’s pet tiger), The Flower of My Secret star Marisa Paredes (as the pious Sister Manure, who physically punishes herself every chance she gets and takes LSD to get hallucinations of the divine), the matronly Julieta Serrano (as the heroin-addicted lesbian Mother Superior), and All About My Mother heavy-hitter Cecilia Roth (as Mercedes, a drug-dealing former nun).

Unfortunately Dark Habits is mostly defined by those iconic Almodóvar qualities that it lacks. Aside from Serrano and Lampreave, the other ensemble actresses play very minor pars, and the crux of the plot lays on the shoulder of Cristina Sanchez, the wife of the producer. Although she played minor roles in Almodóvar’s two previous films (as “Bearded Lady” and “Eusebio’s girlfriend”), it’s obvious he didn’t find an inspiring figure in her as a lead, and the film’s emotional center is lopsided because of it.

Also, the technical quality here is extremely poor. Almodóvar was still building up his mastery of film aesthetic (which begins to rear its head a the party setpiece in the third act), but the kinks he had to work out include such major factors as sound and cinematography. There are entire scenes that are incomprehensibly muffled, and though he has fun with lighting during his chapel scenes, not even the most forgiving viewer would find the camerawork comparable to Bad Education, or even Law of Desire, which came a mere four years later.

It’s fine to spend time with these charming nuns, but the melodrama never coheres into a legible whole (entirely new plot developments are still unspooling five minutes from the end) and it’s a little too long for such a meandering hang-out movie. I love me some nuns gone wild, but an Almodóvar half a decade later could have made something much more moving and satisfying out of this very same premise.

Rating: 6/10

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

Year: 1984

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Carmen Maura, Gonzalo Suárez, Luis Hostalot 

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

The lives of a downtrodden housewife, a dominatrix, an alcoholic writer, an impotent policeman, a lizard, and a  telekinetic little girl intertwine in a Madrid apartment complex.

What Have I Done to Deserve This? (aka ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?, which is not any easier to type) is the worst Almodóvar film I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen all but four at the time I’m writing this. It’s the only one I’ve considered giving a score that isn’t even marginally positive, but as I was flipping through my notes I realized something. This movie is freaking hilarious.

The big standout is Chus Lampreave (playing essentially the same role as her peak performance in The Flower of My Secret, in which she’s lucky enough to get to play off the incredible Rossy de Palma, who the Almodóvar ensemble acquired in 1987). Her batty old mother schtick never gets old, but she has some especially sharp moments here, and her relationship with a lizard she finds in a park might just be the emotional lynchpin of the entire film.

And although Carmen Maura is limited by her character being the center of the “tragi-“ half of this tragicomic film, she still brings a blustery detachment to some of the director’s kinkiest scenes yet that makes them even funnier. You can’t not giggle as she makes a quick buck by sitting next to an exhibitionist going at it with her prostitute neighbor, still clutching the groceries she walked in with, bored out of her mind. And out of all the casual kink of Almodóvar’s early work, nothing can beat the brutally businesslike transaction where she lets her son be adopted by a pedophile dentist because she can’t afford to get him a new crown. It’s dark as hell, but not a single character sees it that way, and that’s the perverse magic of this director, especially during his boundary-pushing Movida period.

So yes, it’s funny. It’s just not much of anything else. The final scenes are incredibly moving, but for the most part the story keeps you at arm’s length, all the while being incredibly confusing. The interlocking story combines autobiographical elements (Almodóvar’s time as a letter writer in his home village is reflected here), vintage kink, a family drama instinct that will eventually pupate into Volver, and a bunch of scattered odds and ends of characters who pretty much amount to nothing (including a telekinetic little girl who should’ve had more than three minutes of screen time), which all jostle for attention in a harried mush.

There are feints toward the cinematic artistry that Almodóvar would truly manifest in Law of Desire, like the lizard named Money who arrives in a time of chaos, metaphorically representing every character’s tangled motivation. But the limitations of the set make this a very static, almost neorealist movie, and that approach is too inherently lifeless to benefit from the director’s particular talents. It’s a noble mess, but a mess nonetheless, and not one that I would feel particularly keen to revisit.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1075

Popcorn Kernels: Pain And Life

Here is another trio of reviews on Pedro Almodóvar films, as we enter our final summer marathon of his collected filmography.

Matador

Year: 1986
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Assumpta Serna, Antonio Banderas, Nacho Martínez
Run Time: 1 hour 50 minutes
MPAA Rating: NC-17

A matador obsessed with death meet a defense attorney with a similar fetish when one of his students confesses to a string of murders

Matador is one of Almodóvar’s weirder movies, and that’s really saying something. It’s kinky, edgy, and dark in ways only his early 80’s output could be. He was still exploring his craft, and there was certainly still room for improvement, but his inimitable voice still rings loud and clear.

For one thing, this tale of rape, murder, suicide, and necrophilia is hilarious. The A-plot is as straight as a drama can be, but it bounces between a litany of buoyant performances on the sidelines: Julieta Serrano as the pious, bullying mother of Antonio Banderas, Chus Lampreave as the doting, oversharing mother of the model he assaults in an early scene, and even Pedro Almodóvar himself, in an uncredited cameo as a fashion show director. Their antics and complete lack of self-awareness allow Matador a levity that prevents the subject matter from becoming too unbearably dark.

And despite its lack of the bold color patterns that would come to define the director’s work, Matador is beautiful on top of everything. The opening scene in which bullfighting is compared to seduction numbers among the director’s most sublime visual sequences. Unfortunately, this level of cinematic perfection fails to sustain itself, and in turn is incapable of keeping the messy plot on life support. It’s still a delightful slice of filmmaking, but it overstays its welcome, something that almost no Almodóvar movie is capable of doing.

Rating: 6/10

The Flower of My Secret

Year: 1995
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Marisa Paredes, Juan Echanove, Carme Elias
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A romance author can’t find inspiration now that her marriage is on the rocks, and takes a newspaper job where she has to review her own novel.

The Flower of My Secret is definitely a middling Almodóvar work, from his period in the early 90’s that people don’t like to talk about quite so much. Nevertheless, if any other director had made it, it would be considered the peak of their career. That’s the kind of sliding scale we’re working with when we discuss Almodóvar, and that’s a glorious thing.

As far as I can figure it, there are only two things “wrong” with The Flower of My Secret. First, while Almodóvar’s plots do tend to meander, this one really gets away from him, especially in the third act. The movie is short enough that the messy plotting isn’t exhausting, but it can be a bit difficult to really sink your teeth into it. The second thing is that the film is just plain. The director’s retro, eye-searing colors and bold set design choices are rather toned down here, so there are no images immutably burned into your brain.

Those are the reasons it’s not a classic Almodóvar film. The reasons it’s a great Almodóvar film are numerous. For one thing, it’s downright hilarious. The plot beats are reserved for some heartstring-plucking melodrama, but some of the film’s many detours find their way into character-based joviality, with dialogue slipping over itself in a beautiful farcical frenzy. This reaches a particular height whenever our protagonist visits her mother and sitter, played by Almodóvar stalwarts Rossy de Palma and Chus Lampreave. Lampreave especially takes what she was working with in Matador and turns it up 11 as a batty, headstrong aging mother stock character given warmth and depth around the edges of her irresistible performance.

The melodrama is also well-crafted, anchored by the terrific Marisa Paredes, who joined the Almodóvar troupe in the early 80’s, but really rose to the top of the heap with his 90’s material. The scene of Paredes seeking comfort from the women in a knitting circle in her hometown is worth the price of admission alone. Paredes suffers a lot, but Almodóvar uses her trials and tribulation to celebrate life, love, art, beauty, and especially women of every shape and size.

Rating: 8/10

Broken Embraces

Year: 2009
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanca Portillo
Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A blind filmmaker revisits a tragedy that struck 14 years ago while he was directing his final film.

Broken Embraces is definitely a Pedro Almodóvar movie. If ever you see a lush melodrama filled with gorgeous women and mop-headed twinks boasting an ending that makes you go “oh, that’s all?,” he is surely behind it. A lot of his favorite themes are present: a death setting a chain of events in motion, an artist finding catharsis through their craft, Penelope Cruz looking gorgeous as all hell… It’s definitely in his drama vein.

Frankly, Almodóvar’s dramas don’t appeal to me nearly as readily as his comedies, but broken Embraces struck me more than most of the others. There’s a quiet beauty in this reflection on a long, full career. And the autobiographical elements are hardly veiled, considering that this character is in the middle of making a fictionalized version of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The only difference is that this version (titled Chicas y Maletas) is kind of a disaster whereas Breakdown is a stone-cold masterpiece.

Like most of his dramas, Broken Embraces is a technical triumph. From the detailed production design to Cruz’s platinum blonde wig so fierce they had to call in animal control, every item in the frame is perfectly composed. All the better to let the emotions of the story spill out around it. Frankly, I can’t find that much unique to point out, because it’s exactly as sublime as his other efforts. I should really step back and appreciate how lucky I am to be able to take this film’s craft for granted, but the sad fact is if it’s not Volver, then I’m just not as invested.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1024