Pedro Almodovar and his movies

Pedro Almodovar is Spain’s best known film director and is an academy award winner; he won the award for best original screenplay in 2002 for his movie “Talk to her”. His films are typified by his portrayal of Spain’s and in particular Madrid’s subversive culture. His movies are often dark with complicated plotlines and many colourful characters including gays, lesbians, drug addicts, transsexuals and transvestites. Almodovar's main protagonists are often strong women, and he is known for his feminist stance. He is openly gay and is admired by many for bringing gay themes into mainstream popular culture. Since winning an Oscar in 2002 his movies have become increasingly popular on the global stage. He is admired by many for broaching subjects that many other directors shy away from.

He was born on September 25^th 1949 in the village of Calzada de Calatrava in the province of Castilla La Mancha. He spent his early childhood in this rurally isolated village and at the age of 8 was sent to study in a Catholic run boarding school in the city if Caceres, Extremadura. In Caceres he was first exposed to the concept of film and cinema and he quickly fell in love with the art form.

He moved to Madrid in 1967 with the idea of becoming a film maker. Spain at this stage was still under the control of the conservative dictator General Fransico Franco. In his early Madrid days he worked a number of odd jobs while working on his film making skills by night, Madrid did not have a school of cinema at that time so he had to teach himself.

In the early 70s he began working in theatre and experimental film he also contributed articles to counter culture magazines. When Franco died in 1975, the liberated Spanish youth celebrated with a cultural renaissance known as the “Movida Madrileno” the Madrid movement. Almodovar was at the crest of this new wave singing with a glam punk band and writing numerous articles and stories. These stories were used as the basis for his early short movies which he began shooting on his handheld camera in 1975.

He made his first full film in 1980 "Pepi,Lucy and Bom and other Girls on the heap"a film about three females with different stories loosely intertwined. His next film Labyrnth of Passions was made in 1982 quickly followed by Dark Habits in 1983. All three movies were based around life in the movement in Madrid and are sexual in nature. He had a number of other films before he released “Tie me up!tie me down!” in 1990, a film that starred a 23 year old Antonio Banderas as a recently released psychiatric patient who kidnaps and abuses a film star. In 1997 he released “Live flesh” a film that starred Javier Bardem and also had Penelope Cruz in her first collaboration with Almodovar. In 2004 he released “Bad Education” a film starring Gael Garcia Bernal as a transvestite/actor who tries to blackmail a film director into giving him a part. This film was extremely controversial as it features stories about child sex abuse in a religious school and the resulting mixed identities. The movie “Return” starring Penelope Cruz was released in 2007 to great critical acclaim. He released “broken embraces” in 2009. In all he has released 17 films not all of which are mentioned above, for a full list of his movies and there summaries click here.

A lot of Almodovar’s movies feature strong women who bond together in times of adversity. In “all about my mother” his main protagonist is a woman who has recently lost her teenage son. She goes in search of the child’s father in Barcelona where she meets and is comforted by a community of women from distinctly different backgrounds, including Penelope Cruz who plays a HIV positive nun and a transvestite prostitute. “Volver” Return is about three generations of women in rural Castilla La Mancha and there resilience to the traumas and difficulties of their lives. His female stars are also portrayed as beautiful women going about their everyday unglamorous lives. He has had a number of female muses throughout his career the latest being the now world famous Oscar winner Penelope Cruz.