Heartfelt melodrama meets candy-colored camp in the Spanish director's tales of women's struggles and solidarity.
Read full descriptionLongtime Almodóvar icon Carmen Maura is but one of many women on the verge in Almodóvar’s international breakthrough, a riotous blend of screwball comedy and fifties melodramas that’s “as crowd-pleasing as it is color-coordinated” (J. Hoberman).
Based on stories by Alice Munro, Almodóvar’s latest follows a middle-aged woman as she tries to make sense of her relationships with her husband, her daughter, and the world around her. “Haunting and hypnotic” (Rolling Stone).
Madrid’s nascent punk and gay underground provides the fertile setting of Almodóvar’s debut feature, a manic slice of screw-you life more post–John Waters than post-Franco.
An “ordinary” housewife navigates a working-class suburban life of deadbeat husbands, mad mothers-in-law, sex-worker neighbors, and child pandering in Almodóvar’s taboo-smashing send-up of the social realist drama. “An absolutely wonderful black comedy” (New York Times).
Winner of the 1999 Cannes Best Director prize, this affectionate drama of a mother’s compassion serves as Almodóvar’s tribute to his two greatest inspirations: women and film.
Almodóvar won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for this film involving the odd friendship between two men, each with a lover in a coma. “Almodóvar’s most mature and mysterious movie” (Newsweek).
Gael García Bernal stars in Almodóvar’s intricate hybrid of film noir, melodrama, autobiography, and Catholic Church exposé involving two old friends revisiting their troubled Catholic school days. “A bold and far-reaching summation of his career to date” (A.V. Club).
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
Penélope Cruz stars as a strong-willed woman aiming to help her teenage daughter and sister, with little help from the men around them, in Almodóvar’s merger of comedy, mystery, and social-realist drama. “Moves beyond camp, into a realm of wise, luxuriant humanism” (New York Times).