Puta Madre! The Pedro Almodovar Poll

Shamefully, I've only seen the last four. But of those: Talk to Her.

I'd have to watch Women on the Verge again. Of the recent stuff, Bad Ed over Live Flesh.

Of the recent work All About My Mother has the slight edge over Volver. Choosing from the earlier work is difficult: Women has more jokes, Law of Desire has more beautiful Banderas and St Sebastian-esque gay kitsch.

Was really surprised how good Flower of My Secret was when I finally got to watch it. It was bad-mouthed pretty badly when it came out. Anyway I think I agree with Morbs except it's probably over All About My Mother rather than Live Flesh.

The torpid Kika (with a badly dubbed Peter Coyote) is the only one of the nineties films I've seen.

That was his nadir right there.

I have serious problems with Talk to Her, from a no-I-don't-tend-to-sympathise-
with-the-rapist-and-why-would-I? kinda point of view.

For me Volver does what Almodóvar does best - lovingly represent women. Women on the Verge, for me, does the opposite of that. Too hysterical and neurotic by far.

Law of Desire is the oldest one I've seen. Feels a bit of its time.

Of the early ones, Matador is probably the best.

By the by, I'm living in Madrid at the moment and CANNOT BUY Almodóvar dvds, box sets etc anywhere. A woman in a Corte Inglés brusquely told me they didn't stock them because nobody bought them. I've spoken to several people who reckon the majority of Spaniards are somewhere between indifferent about and completely in disgust of Almodóvar's body of work. As one charming young man put it to my husband: "It's all gays and drugs - and that's not Spain."

Volver gets my vote - for sheer gorgeousness and lightness of spirit.

Not that it's likely to win, but why did you leave out Pepi, Luci, Bom?

It's kinda difficult for me to choose which one to vote. The eighties films are more hysterical and funny, but the nineties films have more depth and emotional maturity in them. I was a bit dissappointed with Talk to Her (like Zoe I couldn't really get past the rapist thing) and Bad Education (which was more like his eighties films in that it was great genre excercise but had little depth beyond that). Haven't seen Volver yet.

I think I have to go for Live Flesh, which is both an over-the-top genre film and an emotionally mature story.

Though I wish someone will vote for Labyrinth of Passion and What Have I Done to Deserve This? too, since they're among the funniest and funnest movies I've ever seen.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Vote!

I generally don't like his films, but Matador was a good one.

I watched Dark Habits last week, now I've seen all of Almodovar's feature films except Volver and Pepi, Luci, Bom. It was a weird film even for Almodovar's standards, despite some over-the-top elements (nuns taking heroin, a live tiger kept in a monastery) it felt kinda low-key and melancholic, moreso than I would've expected for an 80s Almodovar. A few great scenes there, but overall it wasn't among my favourites.

I think it would be easier to choose his worst movie, which is no doubt Kika. All the other 90s films are universally good though, that was a great decade for him.

Has anyone here seen Pepi, Luci, Bom? Is it worth watching? I'm usually kinda wary of debut films...

In my head, recently, All About My Mother and Live Flesh were tied as my favourites. Everything since those two I've had problems with, esp. Talk To Her for similar reasons as Zoe. But I saw Live Flesh again the other day and its melodrama seemed much emptier than it did in my memory. So I voted for All About My Mother, and am scared of watching it again. I remember watching it on a summer's night at the Dalston Rio and skipping out feeling like Kingsland High St was Barcelona.

Live Flesh dragged.

Good article about songwriter who had two songs in Almodovar movies

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i'm sad that pepi, luci, bom... was left out. that's actually one of my top almodóvar movies. (those todo sobre mi madre is top for me.)

xpost yes, definitely check out pepi, luci, bom. it's kind of ridiculous, but it fits perfectly with what was going on in madrid at the time, la movida. hilarious. also, it's got alaska in it!

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! was the beginning of his nineties slump. Who picked this?!

I surprised that Women on the Verge didn't get more votes, it would have been my pick.

I think people voted for the one they saw, assuming All About My Mother is the most widely seen one. I've seen his 5 most recent and AAMM is the weakest for my money, but still quite good. Volver, La Mala Educación, Talk to Her, Live Flesh all GREAT

What makes you think AMMM is the most widely seen? Volver was on at my local multiplex for ages and seemed by far biggest platform release so far, and got a huge boost when Penelope Cruz was nominated for an Oscar in it.

wau... am I only seeing half this thread? where does zoe outline why she dislikes talk to her?

Wednesday, 4 February 2009 17:08

weird, I logged out and it showed up

bizarre

Have any of our European friends seen Abrazos Rotos yet? It doesn't come out in the US till December :/ Such a long lag time!

just watched the charlie rose interview w/ pedro & penelope cruz ~ nice that almodovar said he's more enthusiastic abt making movies than ever before

cant tell if broken embraces is gonna catch on/get distributed as much as volver

Charlie Rose comes on at 1 am over here.

old movies vs new movies

Yeah, it kind of was. No votes for Flower of My Secret.

Broken Embraces was sorta like bad de Palma.

sadly, ^this is kinda true; 'girls and suitcases' is a great title tho, and seemed more interesting than the rest of the plot

that's cuz it was women on teh verge!

hey Bad Education is maybe even better than I remembered.

so great

rented 'talk to her' last weekend but didn't get to see it :(

watched the scott walker documentary and part of 'our hitler' instead

watched what have i done to deserve this? - it's good!

seeing as ive only seen the top-3 finishers in this poll (plus broken embraces) im planning to gradually go thru the rest in the near future

Broken Embraces was engaging but somewhat anticlimactic.

What is the best movie to see Rossy de Palma in?

all the early ones.

Really enjoyed Broken Embraces but sort of struggled to defend it to the (not impressed) friend I'd seen it with

Has anyone seen Kika? It looks really quirky/awesome/etc (plus Rossy de Palma!) but I'm worried I'd find this whole lolrapey thing really really uncomfortable

I saw it a looooooooong time ago, can't really remember squat.

Feeling really uncomfortable is not always/usually a bad thing.

The only thing I disliked were the graphics. I loved the set of difficult conversations between son and mother. Really powerful.

Do you mean the computer animated interlude describing Salvador's ailments early on? I couldn't help but laugh at that, as well as with it.

Yep, the later bits with his mother were good. There were several very emotional scenes that worked really well for me, especially revolving around the 'Addiction' performance. I liked the relatively quiet restraint of it all, even in those moments.

Yeah that interlude.

I liked the calculated restraint of 'addiction'. More in the prep for it than the actual performance as shown.

has this gotten US distro yet?

I rewatched Broken Embraces yesterday and it's even better than I remember, imo his best

*not yesterday, recently- along with many others

It plays at a local Miami fest the first week of October.

Yeah, this is really good. And it might finally get people to take late depressed Almodovar seriously, that is, everything after Volver. I agree, Broken Embraces might be his best.

I watched Live Flesh last night, which more than any other of his I've seen felt like a precursor to Broken Embraces.

ah we're getting Pain & Glory in October! fantastic

Just finished a wee run of four of his latter films at the local independent cinema over the last month (All About My Mother, Talk To Her, Volver, The Skin I Live In) that tied in with his 70th birthday and the release of Pain & Glory, which I saw just before these. I also saw Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown on Mubi last week.

I liked them all, but Volver was probably my favourite. All About My Mother won in terms of pure emotion and was the one that made me cry in the cinema. Talk To Her pitched the weird, dark comedy aspects perfectly. I really enjoyed The Skin I Live In, but something about it didn't quite work for me. Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown was funny, but felt a bit messy and light (?) in direct comparison to all those later films - it was really interesting to see the development from there through All About My Mother and into the 2000's though.

Right now I'd vote for Volver from what I've seen if this poll reran.

Check out Broken Embraces, imo his best & oft overlooked

I watched The Skin I'm In again last night, and, well, nope: still a stiff. I prefer my Pedro with jokes and camp; when he's serious, his films linger on the unpleasantness (confining women, rape, etc). This seems to happen every couple decades. In the nineties he beached himself between High Heels and All About My Mother with dreary melodramas where the resin's drained from the tree.

Anyway, the new one makes its South Florida debut next week at a festival.

Yeah, The Skin I'm In seems extremely unpleasant to me as well.

I dug it but Broken Embraces is much less schticky, p much just a straight noir, very compelling

Antonio Banderas is warm and wary and watchful in a way he's never been; he deserves the acclaim. His scene with the ex-lover is poignant. Otherwise, I can't explain the acclaim for this second-tier Almodovar other than critics are suckers for films about films.

are you referring to Pain and Glory?

yeah

This; plus the borrowing from Taste of Cherry in the last shot.

just got out of P&G, really enjoyed it. wasn't like rapturously engaged or crying thru the closing credits - just engaged and interested and sympathetic the whole way. i appreciated the loose-threadyness of it - "loose" in something like the way "messy" is used as a compliment. the ex-lover scene was the high point for sure but there was a lot of great stuff.

xp Whoa!

Seeing this in a week

Really liked it. Circuitous and laconic and reflective. Not the sort of career spanning, packed with references to prior films sort of movie I was expecting, but a very good Almodóvar movie, probably his best since Broken Embraces in 2009.

This is pedantic but the ending doesn't borrow from Taste of Cherry - that would be like if the final dolly back to reveal the movie set also revealed Almodóvar himself at work, coaching Banderas. Kiarostami's appearance at the end of Taste of Cherry, where we see them making the movie we've just watched, is different than this more common film-within-a-film thing going on here.

It's nice to have another Almodóvar movie where he just sort of takes his time and it's not plot beat after plot beat. Oddly, in this way it reminded me most of I'm So Excited!!, which isn't really good otherwise.

I disagree: the last 45 minutes consisted of his minder, lover, and Alberto expressing their gratitude toward him, hence my relief when his mom said, "You were a disappointment."

the biggest laugh of the movie

with a less charismatic and self-effacing actor/performance, I probably would've found the Autofiction 101 irritating. but I enjoyed watching Banderas call into his own Q&A high on heroin wearing gigantic sunglasses. he's really funny in this, I found the character endearing enough to hang.

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/pedro-almodovar-quarantine-1202223408/

Thanks, an interesting read. Let me know if you happen to spot the Spanish version anywhere.

Sorry, even the most cursory google would suffice to find it: https://www.eldiario.es/autores/pedro_almodovar/

I'd got an email the other week that Pain & Glory was being added to Mubi on 19th June, but it didn't mention that it's actually part of a deal with Pathé that is going to add a whole bunch of Almodóvar films (and other stuff of course):

https://www.screendaily.com/news/mubi-strikes-uk-ireland-content-deal-with-pathe-exclusive/5150678.article

The Almodóvar titles mentioned...

All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)
Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar, 2004)
I’m So Excited (Pedro Almodóvar, 2013)
Live Flesh (Pedro Almodóvar, 1997)
Los Abrazos Rotos (Pedro Almodóvar, 2009)
Pain & Glory (Pedro Almodóvar, 2019)
Talk To Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)
Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (Pedro Almodóvar, 1989)
Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006)

A good few I've not seen, so excellent news for me.

Pedro Almodóvar,Tilda Swinton, El Deseo , #LaVozHumana . Primer día de rodaje. pic.twitter.com/84ZQVmW9d5

— Agustín Almodóvar oficial (@AgustinAlmo) July 16, 2020

👍

Yep!

Going to be his first English-language production, apparently.

I dunno about the rest of you but I am Tilda Swinton-ed out. Still, good to see Almodovar back at work.

That picture makes me so fucking happy

saw some of What Have I Done to Deserve This? when it came out. It is the only film I have ever walked out on. I think it had more to do with the person I was watching it with than the film.

have been going through his films again, love Matador and The Law of Desire. Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a little more unapproachable but still seems like a classic

i saw Pain and Glory for the first time tonight… after a long unintentional hiatus from watching any recent Almodovar movies (now to be corrected)

goddamn. such a beautiful thing he created! and Banderas. stunning.

agreed, suuuuper lovely film.

I don't know what to think of Parallel Mothers yet. Once again a contemporary film dawdles at least 20 minutes beyond its appointed time. An almost 10-min sequence in which Penelope Cruz learns the paternity of her child could've been done with title cards or dispatched with sharp editing.

Then there's the Franco stuff, introduced and re-introduced late in the picture stuff. I'm trying to figure out if it works or is merely exploitative.

Still, despite its lugubriousness (has he forgotten how to write jokes?), his best film since Volver. He loves the cult of motherhood, Penelope Cruz as cult leader, and the solidarity of women even when it's doing traditional things like cooking.

Then there's the Franco stuff, introduced and re-introduced late in the picture stuff. I'm trying to figure out if it works or is merely exploitative.

I don't think it's exploitative - it's Almodovar taking a stand at a time when this is an important issue in Spanish politic, tying in to the right wing drift and etc - but I don't think it works at all. It first gets brought up as a minor plot point, and I think would've worked well in that context, just a little spice of politics added in, like ppl always praise Carpenter for doing. But then it takes over the movie in the last ten minutes, with zero subtlety displayed, and ends on a quote about historical memory as if that were what the whole film had been about. It's not! Not even on a metaphorical level - ok sure Cruz keeps a secret at one point, but there's no (haha) parallel there.

I think what I liked best about it - and I'm not entirely sure Almodovar is even doing it consciously - is how it portrays older people living in the internet era. Cruz is so often on the phone, not texting or whatsapping or whatever. Every time she gives someone her phone number she actually takes out a piece of paper and writes it down instead of just calling them. And then there's the scene where she asks the kid in the phone store to transfer her data.

Was the blonde model trans? Or some famous person? Her photo session was telegraphed as Important in some way.

Crossover artist that Almodovar is, I was pleasantly surprised to see a large portion of the theatre audience I saw it with were Spanish. Lots of scornful laughter at the mother calling herself apolitical.

finally got around to this & loved it, agree w/alfred that its his best in 15 yrs or more. i thought the franco stuff worked & was threaded through the other story a little more carefully than it may appear at first glance. the ending scenes may not have been "subtle", but its almodovar we're talking about here. i was impressed.

Anyone seen the new short?

I watched Pain and Glory again, which I liked and had placed comfortably in his second-tier. I'm ready to upgrade.

THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET (1995)

the secret is that love dies when u dress like fkn paddington bear

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lmtieqchvpjutjpqaed5tvyi/bafkreibpmwtywv7y6hf6zb5mbpjmqjf6kzpi2isehyunvzn3eyso6slpyq@jpeg

Wow, "the Room Next Door" felt like it was written by ChatGPT.

Lol yeah was disappointed by that one.

I've fallen far behind and haven't seen anything new since Dolor y Gloria/Pain & Glory.

Just haven't been able to work up the energy to watch the new one.

As long as y'all keep in mind that Almodovar writes just as floridly in Spanish.

Yeah, one thing I enjoyed about The Room Next Door was taking in that heightened writing in English. The odd artificiality is all part of the package. The movie didn't really get under my skin, but it was lovely to look at, and could be a conversation-starter, if you wanted it to be.

Somehow completely forgot to see both Parallel Mothers and Strange Way of Life. They just sort of disappeared after I saw the trailers.

I forgot I saw Strange Way of Life.

I'm not anywhere near an Almodovar completeist. I've only seen about five, maybe six, but I do have a fondness for Volver.