Netflix regularly acquires major works as part of collections. This month, the great Pedro Almodóvar is in the spotlight!
He is one of the greatest directors of all time. Some even call him a genius. With his art, Pedro Almodóvar revolutionized Spanish cinema.
When the dictator Franco died in 1975, Spain emerged from 40 years of nightmare. The country was bruised, gagged by a dictator who sowed terror after the war in Spain by imposing his deadly ideology. Only one Spaniard has remained the spokesperson for freedom, eccentricity and love: Pedro Almodóvar.
Not only has the director proven himself to be a visionary artist, but he is also an important figure in Spain’s evolution as a free, open and welcoming democracy after Franco’s reign of terror.
Now, after years of rejecting opportunities to work in America, Almodóvar is finally taking the plunge. This year, he presented at Cannes a western in the form of a short film entitled Strange Way of Life with Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke.
Netflix is thus well inspired by offering from May 26 a collection dedicated to the Madrid director with five great films.
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All About My Mother (1999)
All About My Mother won Almodóvar his first Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and forced the world to empathize with people most people would have happily ignored.
When Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a single mother in Madrid, sees her only son die on his 18th birthday, she decides to return to Barcelona to tell the father of the death of the son he never knew.
In the 1990s, as homophobia and transphobia peaked with the advent of the AIDS crisis, Almodóvar gave the LGBTQ community back the humanity society denied them, and showed that anyone, no matter whatever she did or whoever she is, deserves to be loved.
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Talk to Her (2002)
Talk to Her is one of Almodóvar’s few films to center on two male protagonists, offering a very different perspective from the director. The two men, Benigno and Marco, couldn’t be more different, but their love for two comatose women ties them together. Almodóvar offers an empathetic analysis of the line between love and obsession and how easily it can be crossed.
While most of the men in Almodóvar’s films tend to be harshly punished for their heinous acts, those in Talk to Her benefit from a compassionate portrayal. Although they are not saints, they are endowed with a depth of feelings unheard of for heterosexual men in Almodóvar’s cinema.
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Volver (2006)
In one of the most fascinating melodramas of the 21st century, Almodóvar made us laugh and cry. Volver is set in a small town in La Mancha where secrets abound and the dead never rest. It’s a film best approached coolly and let its mysteries wrap you in this (very) Spanish story of betrayal, maternal affection and trauma.
With Penélope Cruz at the helm, the story gains in grace and strength, as well as emotional depth. No other film can claim to have won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for all of its protagonists. A moving film in many ways and a breathtaking performance by Penélope Cruz!
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The skin that lives (2011)
La Piel que Habito is one of the few terrifying and difficult to watch films of the director’s work. It follows a brilliant plastic surgeon, Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), who has recently created tough synthetic skin. His guinea pig is a mysterious woman imprisoned in his house, and who is not at all what she appears to be.
This is a body horror movie without the screeching or spurting of blood and with a lot more relevant commentary on gender-based violence. With the help of Banderas and Elena Anaya (god!), Almodóvar examines issues of gender identity, sexuality and the violence of self-actualization in a particularly disturbing way.
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Pain and Glory (2019)
It is Almodóvar’s most personal and autobiographical film. It explores the mystery of what it takes to become an artist. Pain and Glory tells the story of Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) who grows from a precocious young boy in a small cave town in La Mancha to an accomplished author in his adult life. A man who strives to find meaning in his life.
Almodóvar offers us on the one hand a story about the pain of growing up in a strange place and on the other hand a kind of confession about his romantic failures and his professional successes.
More than any of his films, this one feels like a perverse intrusion into his life that would be uncomfortable to watch were it not for Antonio Banderas’ incredible portrayal and the candor with which Almodóvar tells us this story. .
All these films are available on Netflix from this Friday, May 26.