Punk Almodovar

Almodóvar heads for the convent, where a singer hides out after her lover dies and finds that one sister takes LSD, another writes trashy novels under a pen name and a third keeps a tiger. Every one of them wants somewhere to belong. — A singer needs to vanish after her lover dies of an overdose, so she picks a convent whose order exists to take in fallen women. The trouble is that the sisters have fallen rather low themselves, and the Mother Superior can’t hide how delighted she is to have her.

Pills, vacuum cleaners, and a marriage-as-prison. This explosive anti-melodrama about female exhaustion fuses social satire with irreverent slapstick in one of the most inventive moments of Almodóvar’s early period. — Gloria, a Spanish cleaning woman living a chaotic life, shares a cramped apartment with her grumpy husband Antonio, their two trouble-prone sons, and her ruthless mother-in-law. With little emotional support, Gloria is pushed to her limits when an argument with her husband leads to a macabre turn of events. As she struggles to deal with the consequences, a series of eccentric characters enter the scene, amplifying the madness.

Almodóvar started his own production company to make sure this film was his alone. A man’s fling with a lover played by Antonio Banderas, who takes it as a promise and tries to get to him through his sister, turns into a dark triangle of violence and obsession that never once hits the brakes. — Pablo, a director, is getting over a lover who has just left town when he starts a brief affair with Antonio, who takes it far more seriously than he does. Pablo’s sister, Tina, is an actress with a past, and Antonio’s obsession is slowly turning dangerous. — Teddy Award for Best Feature Film | Berlin Film Festival | 1987

Antonio Banderas ties Victoria Abril to a bed and waits for her to fall in love with him. To Almodóvar this is a black romantic comedy, and the Spanish master made it loud, explosive and every bit as controversial as it sounds. — Ricky walks out of a psychiatric hospital knowing exactly what he wants, which is to marry Marina, a porn actress he once spent a night with, and to have children with her. Marina, unfortunately, doesn’t remember him. So Ricky breaks into her flat and ties her to the bed. — Official Selection | Berlin Film Festival | 1990

A mother and daughter are pushed to the limit, to music by Ryuichi Sakamoto, when the only man they both loved is killed and the trial becomes the first place they’re ever honest with each other. Almodóvar turns the courtroom into a confessional. — Becky left her daughter in Madrid fifteen years ago to sing abroad, and now she’s coming back to a Rebeca who has grown up and, in the meantime, married one of her mother’s old lovers. When he is killed, the police have exactly two suspects. — Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Golden Globes | 1992

A TV reporter with a camera strapped to her head and a Jean Paul Gaultier outfit shares the story with a naive make-up artist, a peeping photographer and a killer, and sooner or later everything private ends up on air. It may be Almodóvar’s most extreme film, and he isn’t asking anyone’s approval. — Kika does make-up for a living and believes in every face she works on. Her boyfriend is a photographer who likes to watch people, and his stepfather, an American writer, lives under the same roof. Meanwhile a TV reporter hosts a show about the worst things that can happen to a person, and she needs a new one by tomorrow. — Best Lead Actress (Verónica Forqué) | Goya Awards | 1994

Marisa Paredes plays a romance writer contracted to turn out five happy endings a year, which gets harder once her husband stops calling from Brussels and the happy endings refuse to come. One scene here became the seed of “All About My Mother”. — Under a pen name, Leo writes the bestselling romances her contract demands, five a year and every one with a happy ending. But her husband has gone to Brussels and stopped calling, and everything she writes now comes out dark and sad, which her publishers won’t go near. — Best Actress (Marisa Paredes) | Karlovy Vary International Film Festival | 1996

Almodóvar turns darker here, opening in a Madrid under a state of emergency with a woman giving birth on a bus. From that moment chance ties five people together, and two of them are played by a young Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. — On a bus in Madrid at Christmas 1970, with the city under a state of emergency, a young prostitute gives birth to Víctor. Twenty years later he goes looking for Elena, a girl he once spent the night with, and he’s in her flat when two policemen walk in. One of them will leave in a wheelchair. — Nominated for Best Film Not in the English Language | BAFTA Awards | 1999 Nominated for Best Foreign Independent Film | British Independent Film Awards | 1998