Pedro Almodóvar
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (born September 24, 1951, in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer. He is the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation. Almodóvar’s films enjoy a worldwide following and he has become a major figure on the stage of world cinema.
Style
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. Almodóvar never judges his characters actions, whatever they do, but he presents them as they are in all their complexity. Desire, passion, family and identity are the director's favorite themes. The success of his movies has brought awareness to the cause of equal rights.
Broken Embraces (2009)
Almodóvar’s most recent film Broken Embraces (Abrazos Rotos), released in Spain on March 18 2009, is the director’s longest and most expensive feature. The plot follows the tragic fate of a former film director, who was blinded in a car accident fourteen years before. The film has a fractured puzzling structure, mixing past and present and film within a film that Almodóvar explored previously in both Talk to Her and Bad Education. Broken Embraces is built up as homage to the craft of film making and takes some cues from Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli and Almodóvar’s own Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
Filmography
- Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap, 1980)
- Laberinto de pasiones (Labyrinth of passion, 1982)
- Entre tinieblas (Dark Habits, 1983)
- ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? (What have I done to deserve this?, 1984)
- Matador (1986)
- La ley del deseo (The Law of Desire, 1987)
- Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1988)
- ¡Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, 1990)
- Tacones lejanos (High Heels, 1991)
- Kika (1993)
- La Flor de mi secreto (The Flower of My Secret, 1995)
- Carne trémula (Live Flesh), 1997)
- Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother, 1999)
- Hable con ella (Talk to Her, 2002)
- La mala educación (Bad Education, 2004)
- Volver (2006)