Almodóvar.

By Alison Willmore on 08/08/2006

Once, in the waning hours of a party, someone tried to convince us (with the overwhelming certainty of the very intoxicated) that the director's name was in fact actually Almodóvarmodóvar. It was great fun to hear anyone slur that out loud, but he was so serious and so insistent that we began to doubt ourselves: Why would anyone go to such lengths to argue such a ridiculous point? Maybe it was really Almodóvarmodóvar. At which point we put ourselves in a cab and went home. Meanwhile, Sony Pictures Classics' Viva Pedro retrospective kicks off this Friday, and at the Village Voice Michael Atkinson has a nice essay on the two Almodóvars, as he sees it, and how each is represented in the films selected (he'd like to see more of the earlier, nastier Pedro):

What's missing in these later movies is risk, and the sulfurous charge to be had from the earlier films—including Dark Habits (1983), a very special doped-dyke-nuns comedy-—and from Kika, which transgressed perhaps farther than any other film in the oeuvre (specifically, with a long comedic rape scene that revolted many but called the cards on our pop-entertainment amusement with some kinds of violation, like murder and torture, and not others). An utterly fearless carnivale, with enough plot for three movies and a Gaultier costume-design attack that verges on cyborgian hysteria, the unjustly maligned and hilarious Kika is the most Buñuelian of Almodóvar's movies, and seems the one in need of a re-release.

New York magazine divides the series' offerings up into "The Good," "The Bad" and "The Superior."

The Guardian has a transcript of Maria Delgado's interview with Almodóvar and actor Penélope Cruz (who stars in his latest, "Volver") in front of a live audience (there's an audio version here, if you have the patience), while Simon Hattenstone interviews Cruz by herself:

She smiles when I mention Almodóvar's adoration, and says, yes, it is a love affair of sorts. "You don't have to have sex involved in a love story for it to be a love story. When I'm at the end of my life, thinking about the most important people in my life, people I have loved the most, Pedro will be one of the main people."

+ A Tale of Two Pedros (Village Voice)
+ The Almodóvar Octet (New York)
+ Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz (Guardian)
+ Homecoming queen (Guardian)