Celebrity Interview - Pedro Almodóvar - Comments
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Pedro Almodóvar
Poster: 01/05/2006
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Returning with a lined brow and greying temples - like in Carlos Gardel's tango - Oscar-winning director and screen-writer Pedro Almodóvar has rediscovered his origins, relatively unshackled. In his own words, to return (or "Volver", the name of his latest film) meant reverting to a perfect symbiosis between comedy and drama - and going back to his birthplace, La Mancha, inseparable from his mother. Furthermore, he returned to "women's cinema", creating another "actresses' film", and working once again with his eternal muse: the enduring and wonderful Carmen Maura.
Should you always look directly at death - without drama, without barriers?
I don't really know what's the best way to confront it. I now see death in a less strange way. I don't understand this life cycle, and Volver hasn't clarified it any more for me, but I do now see it in a more natural way, with a lot more serenity than a year ago. After making the film I became frailer, weaker. There was a part of my life which was rigid; after the film I've relaxed a bit. It's like I've looked into a well to come face to face with my emotions as a child, those I feel every time I return to La Mancha.
Is it true that, as the years pass, one comes closer to the simple concept of existence ending?
Not in the case of this film, no. The idea of Volver goes back to the times of La Flor de Mi Secreto (The Flower of My Secret, 1995). It's one of the stories Marisa Paredes told in the film, about a Puerto Rican who, abandoned by his wife, thought about killing her mother so he could meet up with her again at the funeral. Obviously, since then the story has changed many times. However, I always had Raimunda in my mind as the principal character, and over time her face has become completely identified with that of Penélope Cruz.
So you always thought of Penélope for the part of Raimunda?
Undoubtedly, she is the "maruja" inspired by the early Sophia Loren, the one who sold fish in Naples, with Claudia Cardinale's hairstyle and many of Anna Magnani's traits in Luchino Visconti's Bellissima...I really think Penelope is magnificent. A young country girl, always wearing tight skirts; low-cut cardigans with uplifted and firm breasts - which, by the way, have not been operated on (he laughs); and heavily defined eyes which are one moment dry and threatening, then suddenly filled with tears.
I imagine that meeting up again with Carmen Maura, with whom you hadn't worked for 17 years, was one big party...
Yes, we both saw that we still had the same chemistry as before. Her character doesn't appear until the end, but once she does she absorbs the whole story. Carmen is incredible and there are things that never change, even as time passes by. The vibe between all the actresses has been great; really, they were all like a family.
Agustina, played by Blanca Portillo, is the great film discovery of the season...
Blanquita's character, Agustina, represents an important element in this female universe: solidarity among neighbours. She's the most country bumpkin of them all, as Blanca described her own character before shooting the film, and provides an essential family element: the lonely neighbour who knows your secrets, who worries about your well-being, the person who is always there for you when needed. And all that in spite of being the victim of her own personal tragedy: her mother's disappearance and health problems, which she has never come to terms with.
Every time a new character comes onto the scene the musical chords change their sequence. Once again music plays a very important role in your film...
The music has been produced by Alberto Iglesias, nominated for an Oscar in the recent awards, for The Constant Gardener. The main song on the soundtrack is Gardel's tango Volver, sung by Estrella Morente. It made us all cry whenever Estrella sang it during filming. By the way, she's an incredible artist.
Shooting the film in La Mancha last summer, with temperatures rising to 40º, that was a tremendous effort by the team...
Yes, with locations in Granátula, Calzada, Valenzuela and Almagro villages in La Mancha, and the Madrid neighbourhoods of Tetuán and Vallecas, it was a real baptism of fire. La Mancha gains an international dimension in this film. It's a personal tribute because my birthplace also figures in the next two scripts I have in mind, though in a different way: another decade.
In any case, the family structure you create in this film isn't really the most traditional one in La Mancha, is it?
Family structures changed a long time ago. There are families with two mothers, with just one mother. Family structures are no longer - and shouldn't have to be - of the Christian model. The church can't impose just one single family model. People in small villages transgressed more than what people in big cities thought they did.
Do you believe your films have helped to change this society model?
Films, like any other show, not only artistic, can help not necessarily to change things but to encourage social progress, because people are always ahead of political life and laws. I'm not a symbol of anything; it would be overwhelming to assume such a responsibility. I do films from my own point of view, with all the sexual options always included. I avoid being a symbol, although it is true that in all the places around the world where I have travelled, there has always been someone who's thanked me for Ley del Deseo (Law of Desire, 1987), which freaks me out because it's a huge responsibility.
Would you say that the law which gave homosexual couples (in Spain) the same marriage rights as heterosexuals is, in this sense, the achievement of the century?
Unquestionably, it is. I'm not getting married, but it's important that (homosexual union) is called marriage, so it's the same for everyone. I've always considered family to be the core that surrounds a child. I believe that if you take care of them, you're with them, you give them company, you ease their fears, you give them love and good manners - that is what being parents is all about. Nineteen years ago, in Law of Desire, I talked about an atypical family, in which Carmen Maura was a transsexual who - together with her brother, Eusebio Poncela - raised a girl from a past relationship. They were a family because they were the ones who took care of the child. It's not cinema, but life itself, which has evolved.
Are you still so meticulous and thorough when you direct?
I'm obsessively meticulous, and sometimes I doubt if it's the best system, especially when I see the fear etched over some actors' faces. My intention is not for them to follow every instruction I give, by the letter, but for some of the things I say to be in their thoughts subconsciously. Many times I think I should just let them do things their own way, without any pressure. I have this fantasy, actually already written, about what would happen if I - a real chatterbox who gives so many explanations - couldn't talk anymore. And suddenly actors, technicians, absolutely everybody would take their revenge, and do whatever they please - and the film was great and a huge success.
"I now look at death in a more natural way"
CONFESSIONS OF A GENIUS
An aroma that provokes sensations: Nard
A food you like to have seconds of: Cocido madrileño (typical Madrid stew)
A habit you can confess to: I can't stand noise when I wake up.
A habit you're embarrassed to confess to: Eating Selva Negra chocolate cake in nervous or tired moments.
A passion: Infidelity (he laughs).
Main charms of seduction (your own): Simplicity together with baroque-like expressiveness.
How someone would conquer your heart: Diverse ways - depends on who it is. I couldn't generalise.
A place to live: Madrid (at the moment).
A place to return to: Salvador de Bahía
A book to re-read: The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.
A film for all time: Imitation of Life (1959), by Douglas Sirk.
Favourite Spanish director: Luis Buñuel and Luis G. Berlanga, a happy couple.
Favourite foreign director: Alfred Hitchcock
Favourite Spanish actress: Julia Gutiérrez Caba, Mariola Fuentes, Carmen Maura, Chus Lampreave and many more.
Favourite Spanish actor: Javier Bardem, Antonio Banderas and various others with whom I still haven't worked.
A personal and professional ambition: Being able to continue changing from one type of film to another, at least until the end of this decade.
Something you did just for money: A very bad advert which was hardly seen, promoting Canary Isles bananas.
Something you would never do for money: Make a film without feeling it.
What you wouldn't like to die without...: Having a child?
VOLVER
A story about now and forever
The plot of Pedro Almodóvar's latest film, Volver, is about two sisters, Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and Sole (Lola Dueñas). The first one is a young mother who works hard to maintain her family: a teenage daughter (Yohana Cobo) and a husband more interested in drinking, watching football and spying on his daughter when she gets changed than going to work.
Raimunda's strong character clashes with elder sister Sole's shyness. Since her husband left her, Sole's life has passed between highlights and hair dryers in an illegal hairdressing salon she runs from home.
Both have been orphans since their parents died in the frequent fires suffered by their home village in La Mancha - where the high winds not only intensify fires but also cause a high incidence of madness among the villagers. After their aunt's death, Sole has to return to the village for the funeral (her sister is unable to go because she has to get rid of a body), and on her way back to Madrid she realises she's travelling with more than memories of her aunt: her mother's ghost is in the car boot. However, far from questioning what's happening she puts her mother to work in the hairdresser, disguising her as a Russian vagabond.
SPAIN'S MOST CELEBRATED FILM-MAKER
Pedro Almodóvar arrived in Madrid at 17 years, leaving behind a very traditional Castilla-La Mancha. His artistic interests encouraged him to look beyond the ordinary, and his desire to transform everyday images into something more aesthetic led to his love affair with the camera lens. His economic situation was poor, so he went to work for Télefonica as a civil servant, and over the next 11 years mixed a day-time job with underground writing, acting and directing (short films), as well as some eccentric musical sorties with Fabio MacNamara.
He released his first film, Pepi, Luci, Bum y Otras Chicas del Montón (Pepi, Luci, Bum and the Other Girls) in 1980, and - receiving favourable critical response after the premiere - decided to leave Telefónica and immerse himself completely in the magic of creation, without time schedules. Almodóvar embarked on a personal battle to create his own language, fundamentally within the colour of his films. Each tapestry, each object, is carefully studied to form part of a unique visual symphony. But his films are much more than harmoniously displayed objects: they feature "Almodóvar women" and "Almodóvar men, with each personalised aspect coming together in a jewel of the Fifth Art.
"Almodóvar's girls" perform melodramatic scenes with eccentric touches before finally becoming humane and divine. His discoveries include Antonio Banderas, who emerged from these broken stories to triumph in Hollywood thanks to his vitality. When Hollywood nominated Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) for an Academy Award in 1990, everybody expected them to be able to understand the delicate irony, the obvious idiosyncrasy of Almodóvar's scenes. But on that occasion it wasn't so clear, and it took another decade before Pedro Almodóvar - a magnificently accomplished, and very personal, director - could thank Uncle Oscar, in his "English made in La Mancha".
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