Pedro Almodóvar / Edition 1

by Marvin D'Lugo

Overview

Perhaps the best-known Spanish filmmaker to international audiences, Pedro Almodóvar gained the widespread attention of English-speaking critics and fans with the Oscar-nominated Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and the celebrated dark comedy Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!.

Marvin D'Lugo offers a concise, informed, and insightful commentary on a preeminent force in modern cinema. D'Lugo follows Almodóvar's career chronologically, tracing the director's works and their increasing complexity in terms of theme and the Spanish film tradition. Drawing on a wide range of critical sources, D'Lugo explores Almodóvar's use of melodrama and Hollywood genre film, his self-invention as a filmmaker, and his on-screen sexual politics. D'Lugo also discusses what he calls "geocultural positioning," that is, Almodóvar's paradoxical ability to use his marginal positions—in terms of his class, geographical origin, and identity—to develop an expressive language that is emotionally recognizable by audiences worldwide. Two fascinating interviews with the director round out the volume.

An exciting consideration of an arthouse giant, Pedro Almodóvar mixes original interpretations into an analysis sure to reward film students and specialists alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252073618
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	05/24/2006
Series:	Contemporary Film Directors
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Marvin D'Lugo is a professor of Spanish and adjunct professor of screen studies at Clark University. He is the author of The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing, and Guide to Cinema in Spain and coeditor of A Companion to Pedro Almodóvar.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
PEDRO ALMÓDOVAR AND HIS CINEMA 1
Low-Level Melodrama 1
Pepi, Luci, Bom, and Other Friends of Pedro 16
Migration and Melodrama 29
Thrillers 45
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown59
Transnational Repositioning after Women on the Verge 67
The Flower of My Secret 85
Live Flesh 93
All about My Mother 99
Talk to Her and Bad Education 105
INTERVIEW WITH PEDRO ALMODÓVAR 131
SELF-INTERVIEW 145
Filmography 153
Bibliography 159
Index 165

Editorial Reviews

Spanish film director Almod var is a master storyteller and celebrity auteur, who has captured post-Franco Spain in such provocative films as Labyrinth of Passions and Bad Education. He is famous for his eccentric characters, gender-bender plot twists and homage to American film genres-and D'Lugo, a Clark University professor of Spanish and screen studies, succinctly chronicles his life from modest rural beginnings to his explosion on the Madrid culture scene in the 1980s and subsequent international acclaim. Be it early Super 8 shorts or creating Oscar winners All About My Mother and Talk to Her, Almod var's forte is exploring the intricacies of sex, death and violence. En route, he has kick-started the careers of Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, while perfecting his own brand of melodrama. His appeal is traced to what D'Lugo calls his "geocultural positioning"-an ability to transform his marginal status as a gay director from the provinces into a worldwide visual language. "I try to solve the problem of how to get the big emotion from the audience," says Almod var. D'Lugo analyzes his films and influences, and even provides a clever self-interview: Almod var on Almod var. For fans and film students alike, D'Lugo's contribution to the Contemporary Film Directors series celebrates the director's camp aesthetic and artistic sensibilities with insight and elan. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"For fans and film students alike, D'Lugo's contribution to the Contemporary Film Directors series celebrates the director's camp aesthetic and artistic sensibilities with insight and elan."—Publishers Weekly

 
 



"[D'Lugo] significantly extends the critical discourse on Almodovar's work by focusing on the cluster of ambiguities and polarities that sustain the most controversial aspects of Almodovar's authorship."—Screening The Past

"Providing a thoroughly researched synthesis of the many years of study of Almodovar's work by other scholars in both Spanish and English, D'Lugo nevertheless makes the narrative his own through contrasting Almodovar's early films to the films that inspired the director and the ones he seemed to revile and react to, and by emphasizing the auteur's own role in the creation of his personality as a celebrity-author ... With such a thorough and well-written book as D'Lugo's, a full appreciation of ... the genius of its creator has become a lot easier and more enjoyable."—European-films.net

"A valuable introduction to, and summation of, the career of one of the world's most provocative and interesting film directors."—The Gay & Lesbian Review

From the Publisher