Puta Madre! The Pedro Almodovar Poll

Same here.

I rematched What Have I Done to Deserve This? two weeks ago; it moved into Essential Almodovar.

yes i'm baffled by its low placing here -- unless it's just too early and many poll-tickers hadn't seen it?

certainly my favourite almodovar, one of my favourite films ever

What Have I Done is definitely essential Almodovar. And Maura, for that sake. But the man has made 20 films at this point, something is bound to get lost in the pile. I think What... was even missing on his box on wikipedia for a while.

It got a splendid DVD reissue a few years ago; that's the copy I checked out of the library.

Essential:

What Have I Done to Deserve This?
Law of Desire
Woman on the Verge...
All About My Mother

Good to Fine:

Matador
Bad Education
Volver
I'm So Excited

Meh:

Tie Me Up!
Live Flesh
The Flower of My Secret
The Skin I Live In

Unspeakable:

Kika
High Heels

Must Watch Again But Suspect I'll Still Dislike: Broken Embraces

I saw What Have I Done when it came out in 1984, I assume at the Scala, the legendary London rep cinema that Kubrick later got shut down for showing for (perhaps recklessly) showing A Clockwork Orange when it was withdrawn from distribution in the UK.

And loved it -- I'd only moved to London the year before and somehow it fitted exactly into what I was expecting to get from this amazing scary new city, culturally. (haha ie it was darkly funny and super-bleak…)

I was struck by its confidence: here are the tropes and tonal approaches Almodovar would use again and again; yet it's also scuzzier, blessedly, than he ever would be again.

I suspect most would put the essentials as Talk to Her, All About My Mother, Women on the Verge, Volver. Probably in that order. As in, those are the ones that would do best on critics lists, that were nominated for academy awards, etc. I'm not saying I agree with that list, but I suspect that's the consensus.

What Have I Done - first serious film (?) - Law of Desire - first gay film. Volver and Broken Embraces really a combo in my book, as meta commentary on Almodovar himself.

I'd say there's a lot of gay in What Have I Done's tonal approach.

I forgot Talk to Her, which hovers between essential and good.

He had a rough '90s; his approach calcified into self-parody and mannerism, and he couldn't find the scenarios that made him less self-conscious. It also helped that those '00s were sizable box office hits for foreign films.

My favourites are Live Flesh and The Skin I Live in - crime and horror are good genres for him to work in.

I think Volver was the last I saw -- and I don't really remember much about it. What Have I Done I remember well. Carmen Maura, but can't just be her -- she's in both.

There was a real excitement, I think, to his move away from scuzziness into the bright bold gay shapes and stylisation of later films. First, was anyone else doing anything like this? (Probably yes, but it wasn't being shown on the London art circuit -- or at least not being made such a noise about.) Second, it reflected a move out of the furtive shadows and into the bright bold open of LGBTQetc cultures, where funny and silly (and catty and cartoony) were also possibliities at last -- this was new and it felt like something was giving way, in a good way.

But I think that latter excitement now feels a bit retroactively tainted, Pink Pound triumphalism as proto-gentrification blah blah; the beginnings after all of what's begun to turn horrible in London? Not Almodovar's fault, really -- at the least, the London element isn't -- but it feels (now) like there's something a bit thoughtless about the gleeful cruelty in the mid-period stuff?

Oh well. "It's a bright, guilty world," as someone once said.

^^^not really sure if i've put this very well -- and i haven't actually rewatched any of them for ages, so it's more based on thinking "not sure i much want to" than anything in them. What I'm trying to get at is that a particular strand of excited, quasi-political pleasure -- which I very much enjoyed and took part in at the time -- seems somehow compromised now, and I'm looking a bit askance at my own (obviously tiny) (I hope tiny) role in changing London for the worse when we ("we") all thought it was getting better. I *don*'t feel this when I think about What Have I Done, which i very much do want to see again RIGHT NOW (except I'm meant to be working).

Probably I should watch all of them again and in the meantime shut up.

Got to see High Heels a couple of weeks ago as part of the retro that is doing the rounds at the BFI and I liked it quite a bit. Friend I was talking to said she loves the Telenovela quality of his work and HH had quite a lot of that.

Stopped around Volver but I'll probably catch the new one at the weekend.

There's definitely some of it that seems weird in hindsight. The many many rapes, for instance - Kika is the worst, but not the only one. The constant referring to of 'transsexuals', and the character of Lola in All About My Mother, a dying junkie transwoman who's the father of two Estebans and transmits AIDS to a young nun, and is called 'an epidemic' by the mother hero of the film. I think the transwomen are called 'men who want to be women' in the credits. He was a pioneer, but pioneers sometimes take the wrong way.

One thing really interests me, though, and that's how much he has dominated the Spanish film scene for so many years. I'm reading a book on Spanish cinema post-Franco, from 1986, and it claims Spanish cinema is better than ever, and lists all the directors that make it so, and Almodovar is not among them. He has three pages as the very last director dealt with in the book, shortly introducing his first five films. Originally, New Spanish Cinema was the poetic, allusive art films of Erice and Saura - especially Saura - but this weird punky queer stylist completely changed everything up-side-down. Today, if anyone thinks of Spanish films outside of Almodovar, it's probably the sex films of Luna and Medem, or the fantasies of del Toro (who is not Spanish, but...) and Amenabar. The art film is almost forgotten, and except for Erice, really hasn't aged that well.

That's really interesting. A huge part of the strategies in the 70's were formed by censorship, and the needs for artistic language that sidestepped the constraints of the conservative regime. And that is the same for so many other cinemas, from Taiwan in the 80's to Iran in the 90's. What happens in Iran after the regime falls? Will there be an Iranian Almodovar or Medem?

Unlike Spain, though, Iran's gotten a lot more films out post-1979.

And the public opinion of the shah and his allies is probably lower than that of the republicans, so there's not that energy to draw from in a post-regime world. And a million other differences. I'm just spitballing :)

Oddly enough I just read something this morning quoting Almodovar as saying Erice's El Sur is the greatest film to come from Spain (and distractedly thinking I ought to see that at last).Not even sure what it was -- email ad for the upcoming S&S maybe, or the BFI film site? I seem to have deleted it.

BFI are distributing a new digital print of El Sur in the UK

I would say that Saura's Cría Cuervos has aged pretty well - it's still spellbinding.

Friend I was talking to said she loves the Telenovela quality of his work and HH had quite a lot of that

this is OTM and reminds me of Juan Gabriel, whose songs had similar qualities and an appreciation for the congruences between queerness and melodrama.

BFI are distributing a new digital print of El Sur in the UK

I would say that Saura's Cría Cuervos has aged pretty well - it's still spellbinding.

Almodovar on El Sur (and other Spanish films)

Thanks, that's a good read - and a list for further watching.

thanks julio, yes it was a link to that

WHy is Kika so hated?? The rape scene is despicable, but I get the sense that's not quite the reason people hate it so much. Aside from that, I think it's really fun and Victoria Abril's insane TV host character is batshit and hilarious (also: costumed by Gaultier)

Peter Coyote was so not fun

An Almodovar poll, worst to best:

www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/the-films-of-pedro-almodovar-ranked-from-worst-to-best/P1

My favourites are Live Flesh and The Skin I Live in - crime and horror are good genres for him to work in.

― Foster Twelvetrees (Ward Fowler), Friday, September 9, 2016 1:31 PM (two months ago)

Same as. I dont really like this guys movies. Overheated melodrama isnt my thing maybe

do you like gay?

its the whiff of telenovela that bugs me

What Have I Done to Deserve This? and Broken Embraces at 18 and 17 is definitely wrong! Broken Embraces, especially, is severely underestimated. But who puts WHIDTDT lower than Kika and Dark Habits?

I saw What Have I Done to Deserve This? again a couple months ago and would place it in his top five w/out hesitation.

Well, the battle for top five is tough, but top ten, definitely! I'll also say Almodovar has made few images as touching as the one in Broken Embraces of the blind film director, clawing at the screen with the blurry picture of his lost love.

This one:

http://kronoper.dk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2533_5.jpg

Kika and Broken Embraces are the only two of his films I shun like lepers.

:(

I get Kika, but why Broken Embraces? Except that it's dark and depressing, especially for Almodovar.

hm sry that list is wack

long profile of him in this wks nyer btw

NY MoMA retro underway, think i will go see some of the saucy '80s stuff again

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/3611?locale=en

The only one i really hated when i saw it was Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! I'm willing to rewatch tho.

I rematched its spiffy new DVD release, still think it begins the fallow period. But – mm Antonio.

don't think i've ever seen Dark Habits, or his debut, gonna prioritize those.

no wonder PC got an Oscar nom for Volver - way to save the sleazy reveal until the very end. I have to rewatch it but I remember Broken Embraces being much better - at least less lopsided.

hope his new one makes it to the USA this year

Broken Embraces is too languorous for me. He's best when sleazy + fast.

I love the melancholy of Broken Embraces

I remember Volver feeling like a step back after Bad Education and Talk to Her, but not a huge one.

it's good, a little light, and definitely mining the Academy vein. Too long though, and that reveal isn't given its due.

i watched 'the flower of my secret' tnight, odd one; i liked it but w some reservations

I've wondered how audiences would accept Talk to Her's premise in 2019; I own it but haven't watched it in years.

I gave it to a friend for her birthday recently, knowing nothing about it besides Almodovar. She was... a little perplexed