The intoxicating world of Almodovar

With the release of the teaser trailer for upcoming picture Parallel Mothers, and headlines in the news about Instagram’s controversial censorship of the poster, I look back at my favourite of Almodovar’s late 20th century work and explore the alluring world of his more recent films, through the lens of his production and set design.

The latest heated debate about the poster for Almodovar’s new film is bread and butter to a director who has courted controversy since the 70s.  His earlier films unflinchingly provoked shock through a hyperbolic visual style accompanied by classical Hollywood tropes, pop culture debris, and a transgressive ideological outlook. It reflected and challenged the shifting sensibilities of post-Franco Spain, particularly the changing perceptions of homosexuality, which is explored throughout much of his early work such as Law of Desire. Almodovar explained that,

“My films represent the new mentality…in Spain after Franco died…because now it is possible to make a film like Law of Desire”.

So whilst I wouldn’t recommend his earlier, sexually explicit films to a teenage audience, his later 20th century works such as Volver and All About My Mother are worth exploring. 

All of Almodovar’s films undoubtedly pack a punch, often staying in the mind long after the closing credits, but what interests me most about his later work is its almost intoxicating effect convincing the viewer of the authenticity and naturalism of its almost absurdist stories. The colours and visuals are often exaggerated, the characters hyperbolic and the stories unbelievable - and yet we are always immersed, never an alienated voyeur. Unlike some other visually striking filmmakers, the style of Almodovar’s films never detracts from how real and unfeigned the very fabric of his films feel.

This engaging sense of realism stems from Almodovar’s seemingly effortless stylistic choices. Each film is characterised by a set of colours, each frame carefully decorated  (sometimes sparsely, sometimes cluttered) to both tell the story and evoke emotion. But the costume, set design, lighting and grading never feel forced, nor fabricated as a means of fulfilling a stylistic brief. Thus there is a sense that, though exaggerated, what we are watching is cemented in reality. Perhaps it is this that creates the alluring effect on the viewer, as we enter this beautifully cinematic yet utterly believable world. 

All About My Mother (Cert. 15), his 1999 release and my favourite of Almodovar’s films. Starring Cecilia Roth and Penelope Cruz, the black comedy about a grieving mothers return to Barcelona - the city where she lived before having her son (and where, it transpires, she met his father), was perfectly described by The Guardian as a “funny, sad and emotionally generous movie…about love, parenthood, friendship and loyalty, about life, art and acting roles, about re-creating oneself according to one’s dreams, and about what, if anything, is truly natural.” And indeed, the film is effortlessly stylistically ingenious. The colours are focused mainly, though not definitively, around red, often accompanied by diffused, dusky yellow lighting. Where these colours and lighting are used they feel natural and decisive. Take the example below, from perhaps the most famous shot of the film.

Cecilia Roth as Manuela in All About My Mother

Here we see both colour and lighting motifs of the film- the red coat, lipstick and mural alongside the yellow of Manuela’s (Roth) and Huma’s (seen on the poster) hair and the light shining through the stage door.  These colours all have a justifiable purpose, not there merely for panache, and are therefore at once both entirely believable and dramatically symbolic, helping us absorb the intoxicating world of the film. 

These effortless stylistic choices create an enthralling world for his complex characters.  Sympathetic and multi-layered, the characters inhabiting worlds such as that of All About My Mother add infinite depth. Manuela is cutting and funny, but devastatingly thrown into grief and despondency following the death of her son. The script writes her as a real, fleshed out character. Three dimensional and filled with emotional depth, you believe in her struggles throughout. 

Played beautifully by Roth, Almodovar relies on facial and bodily expression using ‘show not tell’, for Manuela to communicate (or not, leaving us guessing her next move in moments of tension) with the audience. Such trust in both actors and audiences to communicate emotion without over-explanatory scripts makes for a more profound and perhaps more naturalistic film, again allowing Almodovar to stretch the boundaries of reality while maintaining a sense of truth and realism, bolstering up audience engagement.

Furthermore, Almodovar often uses character for moments of comedic relief, contributing to the black-comedy feel of some films, and in others building up the emotional ‘peaks’ of humour and joy so that the fall to the ‘troughs’ hurt the audience even further. This can be seen through Manuela’s best friend in All About My Mother, an ebullient transsexual prostitute (Antonia San Juan) who styles herself La Agrado, “the agreeable one,” and whose humorous remarks lift the film, and audience engagement, throughout.

Penelope Cruz stars as Raimunda in the “gorgeous and playful” Volver, 2006

Such use of character, humour and effortless style to push audience belief in absurd stories as far as possible is arguably epitomized in Almodovar’s gripping melodrama, Volver (2006 - Cert 15: blood, some sexual content). Another favourite of mine, it follows Penélope Cruz’s Raimunda, a hard-working woman with a teenage daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo), and a feckless, layabout husband. Raimunda's family life shatters with one terrible act of violence, and this is followed by a secret about her late mother Irene (Carmen Maura), that surfaces when Irene returns from beyond the grave to make contact with her astonished daughters.

It again takes inspiration from Sirk, using a vivid and intense sensitivity to colour (saturated green, blue and most prominently red) but uses the palette only where it makes sense, with every object holding a distinct purpose, maintaining a sense of reality within a ridiculous story and putting the viewer into a trance-like state. Again, it also relies heavily on its rich, emotive and humorous performances to carry the truly absurd plot. This artistic and narrative mastery allows Almodovar to dance along the boundary of the supernatural while keeping the audience engaged.

With its world premiere due for 1st September 2021 at the 78th Venice International Film Festival, Parallel Mothers sees the return (again) of the collaboration of Almodovar and several of his longtime muses, including Penélope Cruz and Rossy de Palma. The story centres on three mother characters and, as Almodovar stated in a casting announcement in February, the film “return[s] to the female universe, to motherhood, to the family...I speak of the importance of ancestors and descendants. The inevitable presence of memory.” Almodóvar continued, “Parallel Mothers will be an intense drama. Or so I hope”...