The Flower of My Secret

Common Wealth

All About My Mother

To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider…To all actresses who have played actresses, to all women who act, to men who act and become women, to all people who want to become mothers. To my mother.

-Pedro’s dedication

I’m really at a loss for (coherent) words following this one, so I will only say that it was a slow-building, intensely emotional experience for me, and left me in unexpected tears. I don’t want to speak of it critically or comparatively right now, but his entire body of work — so sympathetically, deliriously fixated on women, mothers, relationships between women, women as seen by society and men, and above all The Feminine — has given me so much in so brief a time… His characters — broad caricatures, really, filled to the brim with sincere, precise detail — have become part of me. His narratives — always twisting, always shifting, mutating almost to the point of absurdist pastiche, then reigned in again masterfully — find their way into my own. He captures through cinema something of my life, something I have a rare affinity for. There are only four or five other guys I can say this about… and what else can I say? , , .

Matador

Had to happen sooner or later: here is the first Almodóvar I didn’t entirely love. It crosses that fun-to-flirt-with line between lovably wild and actually unpleasant, framing violence and sex as bleakly and viciously as in Haneke — with, admittedly, much more visual panache. Another first: never has sex in an Almodóvar been so unsexy. Perhaps this one proves his “range.”

Anyway: in this film he conflates the violence of a bullfight with the violence of sex with the violence of something inherent in Spanish culture — again, in a Hanekean sense this is an interesting statement, but his characters (ordinarily so richly drawn!) are simple and baffling, and as in Law of Desire they are reduced to instinct, but perhaps instincts I cannot penetrate. Banderas’ vertigo gives way to telepathy in a truly silly finish — of course I have enjoyed my Almodóvar truly silly, but this one didn’t entirely work for me. Still, there really is a lot of visual bravura in this film, and anything with supporting roles for Carmen, Julieta and Chus is going to be plenty fun.

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Added, 17 June 2007:

I’m thinking of amending my review, though. In a way Matador is masterful because I don’t think he’s trying to make a “statement,” as I said. Those two characters belong to an extreme sadomasochist sexual subculture, and it’s impressive (in a way!) how he presents it without judgment. I also don’t think the film is meant to shock the viewer into a new awareness about some topical issue — as Haneke does. So in the end, I would agree that it is still a very good film, but I would also agree that I may never want to see it again because — yes, it is still very unpleasant to watch!!

Law of Desire

If it had been easier to coordinate, I would have loved to watch Almodóvar’s films in chronological order. From my cherry-picking vantage point, it seems he began to turn a corner somewhere around this film and Women on the Verge…, both films serving as gradients in his progression from his early aggressive, exaggerated work to his later sophisticated, perfectly scripted films. These two seem to embody the very best of both worlds, and are likely to emerge as my very favorites once I’ve finished his CV.

This one really is a punch in the stomach. He starts off simply with a few interesting, but evidently fairly normal characters: a film director, who we learn is gay; an actress who is ridiculed by the press, for reasons not yet known; a viewer who leaves a screening to jerk off in the bathroom. From such ordinary beginnings and realistic relationships, Almodóvar twists the thing and twists it and twists it, turning his characters into ever more monstrous and yet believable, understandable creatures, zinging his narrative through unexpected rages, confessions, and instinctive lunges for what must seem to them the very thing they need to survive. It’s a hell of a ride to behold, but not for a moment is it forced. I won’t spoil a single detail about these characters: there is too much joy in the discovery!

Divorce, Italian Style

Uproariously funny, whether you prefer to see a straightforward, definitively Italian comedy or a wickedly honest, political/pre-feminist satire. Pietro treats all variety of people in this small Sicilian town — from the nominal nobility to harridan wives, starving artists, peasants, lawmakers — with a degree of understanding and respect on the one hand, and farcical exaggeration on the other, at all times. Mastroianni is, well, exactly as perfect as we all expect him to be as the slimy, sad, somehow still-lovable Ferdinando, and Germi’s detailed, rich, and varied choices in presentation are continually surprising and universally effective.

Alice & Martin

Téchiné, sadly, has never worked for me. He’s made so many films, and has a high enough reputation, that I’m almost convinced these sins (against my viewing pleasure) are intentional: a) characters whose actions make no sense whatsoever — in fact, whose actions directly contradict what sense one has been able to make of them, and not in psycholgically revealing ways; b) time jumps ahead several weeks or months without warning, clues or reason; again, this doesn’t seem to be toward any purpose like narrative deconstruction; he just suddenly drops a thread and picks it up again, one supposes, at the next point at which it interests him. The way I’m putting it, it almost sounds like he’s making interesting formal choices, but truly, of the three lackluster films I have seen from him so far this is the least crafted and compelling by far.

Lisboa

Another rather silly Maura vehicle, but held my attention with significantly more success. It’s your average chase thriller, complete with the obligatory sex-in-car scene 2/3 through. I was wondering if the DVD blurbs are designed to be in balance with the actual quality of the films they describe… from “Berta is sexy, mysterious, and possibly insane” I knew this would be awesomely bad. But possibly insane? She’s treated as fundamentally credible from the start, yet our hero doesn’t get it until he hears the story from a third party, and I think this is meant to be a revealing moment for the audience, too. “That sensible man just confirmed everything that crazy lady said!” Actually there are a variety of things in this film I could probably take offense to, but it’s fluff. I really need to get back into the habit of watching good movies.

Dark Habits

This is bitchy, hilarious, and ultimately nearly brought me to tears — who can do all these things as well as Almodovar? His nuns are hardcore drug addicts, tiger tamers and romance novelists; at the film’s core (Julieta Serrano rightfully owns this movie), his Mother Superior admires and wants to be one of her troubled girls, and seethes with barely restrained lesbian desire. In Almodovar’s hands, Catholic satire is wilder than most but far from shrill — above all, it is purely enjoyable.

I’ll be honest, though: I love this movie because I’m in the mood to love this movie. It is not Almo’s most successful narrative. I would probably recommend it to few…

Waitress

Ahh, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I saw this before Johnny Guitar, but wonderful as this was, JG distracted me from it and then some. But Waitress, Waitress… let me try to recall how I loved it.

This is the sort of film that enraptures the willing viewer in its unique spirit. It’s only afterward that one realizes hey, the narrative was pretty straightforward and at times trite — and for that matter, some of the characters were easy stereotypes. Somehow this doesn’t really hurt the film, as the characters are fleshed out by wonderfully three-dimensional performances and fresh, offbeat dialogue. Shelly has a sense of humor unlike anyone’s — wicked, silly, but surprisingly subtle at times. In the end, Waitress feels completely fresh and is enormously successful in evoking both laughter and heartbreak. It’s a shame there’ll be no more like this, following Shelly’s death… I fully expect this to be on my top 10 at the end of the year.