Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar (who's been making feature films since the 1980s) received top honours in Venice at the weekend, the Golden Lion, for his first English-language film starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, The Room Next Door.
The Venice Film Festival is one of the five big prestigious international film festivals (the others being Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance) where major films strive to be premiered either in or outside of competition .
Almodóvar, a darling of the festival circuit, last won at Venice when he was presented with a lifetime achievement award in 2019.
But apart from being an iconic director, Almodóvar is also an accomplished screenwriter and author. Let's take a look at some elements he employs in his screenplays.
Almodóvar: filmmaker and screenwriter
Almodóvar has a highly stylized, distinctive visual and narrative style. The 74-year-old director is a master storyteller and auteur who has also won numerous awards for his screenplays.
Here are three broad take-aways from his writing style:
Women are front and centre
Women have featured heavily in Almodóvar's films, well before "female-led stories" were a thing.
His characters are complex, multi-faceted women who are carrying heavy, emotional burdens and uncovering secrets from their past or present. In the process of building a better understanding of themselves, they are portrayed as simultaneously fallible and loveable.
Engaging plots based on core human emotions
The thing about Almodóvar's films is that a lot of stuff happens, but it's usually events dictated by deep emotional consequences: love affairs gone wrong; deaths in the family; thorny parental relationships, men in love with comatose women...
His stories do not shy away from the melodramatic or the absurd, and the narrative drive comes from the highly personal emotional stakes involved.
Use of humour even in dark circumstances
Often billed as comedy-dramas or black comedies, Almodóvar's films are a combination of melodrama, quirky humour and beautifully framed shots with a splashy colour palette that sometimes have a comic-book feel. The end-product is a unique cinematic experience.
And although the plots of Almodóvar's films often weave together the weird and wonderful for comedic effect, the focus is always on the intensely emotional journey the main characters traverse.
If you want to get started with Almodóvar, here are some of our personal favourites:
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)
Pepa, a voice actor suddenly jilted by her boyfriend, is embroiled in the complicated goings on of her friends and lovers, ex-wives (a murderous mental patient) and a potential plane hijacking. It's a mad-cap, fun and visually stunning ride, and a solid introduction to Almodóvar's style.
All About My Mother (1999)
Manuela, a single parent and senior nurse who arranges organ transplants, tragically loses her son to a road accident. She returns to Barcelona, the city she left while pregnant 17 years earlier, and reconnects with the people she used to know and love, and the area she once worked in as a sex worker. With recurring motives from All About Eve and A Streetcar Named Desire, this is a deeply moving story about friendship, loyalty and new beginnings.
Talk to Her (2002)
Two men strike up an odd friendship based on the fact they have both developed feelings for women who suddenly fell into a coma. Almodóvar's love for his damaged characters is again in full force as he tackles the complex themes of love, adoration and obsession. The rape of one of the coma victims results in a pregnancy and eventually causes the woman to regain consciousness. These are not people with straight-forward lives (who is?) but Almodóvar still manages to tell their stories with delicacy and humour.
Volver (2006)
The story revolves around an eccentric family of women struggling in their day-to-day with cancer, dementia, sexual abuse, murder and finances, as well as the ghost of a dead mother who has decided to put in an appearance. This is a fairly typical complex plot from Almodóvar, set in a closed, superstitious community, but where, ultimately, family ties are restored.
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