DVD/150: LA PIEL QUE HABITO (The Skin I Live In) (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)

LA PIEL QUE HABITO reunited Almodóvar and Antonio Banderas for the first time since ATAME! in 1990.

Robert Ledgard is a respected plastic surgeon who alarms a conference when he says he is researching a new burn-resistant skin, his peers suspect he is still obsessed with his wife's death in a car-crash and the subsequent suicide of his deranged daughter.

Unknown to them, he is beyond research - locked in a bedroom in his secluded mansion is a young woman named Vera who resembles his dead wife and wears a flesh-toned bodysuit to protect the skin that he has grafted onto her body.

They share the house with Robert's servant Marilla who has her own secret: she is Robert's real mother and has never told him.

But who is Vera and what shocking secret is known by only Robert and her?

Revenge is a dish best served cold...

Shelf or charity shop?  Definitely shelf...  Antonio Banderas' darkly menacing performance was his best in years and there is fine work from Elena Anaya as the mysterious Vera and Almodóvar veteran Marisa Paredes as Marilla.  Two other longstanding collaborators make the film a pleasure to watch: José Luis Alcaine's lush cinematography and composer Alberto Igleisias' compelling score.  

Dvd/150: TODO SOBRE MI MADRE (All About My Mother) (Pedro Almodvar, 1999)

The culmination of Almodóvar's exploration of more personal storytelling, this is one of my favourite films.

For his 17th birthday Manuela takes her son Esteban to see his favourite actress Huma Rojo in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE but it ends tragically when he is killed running after Huma's car.

Heartbroken, Manuela returns to Barcelona where she lived with Esteban's father before he had a sex-change and became 'Lola'.  She meets her trans prostitute friend Agrado who says that Lola is now very ill.

They trace Lola to a drop-in centre and Sister Rosa reveals that her befriending Lola has resulted in her pregnant and HIV-Positive.  Manuela cares for her but life changes when the production of STREETCAR reaches Barcelona.

Fate sees Manuela employed as Huma's dresser but when asked to play 'Stella' at short notice, she reveals she first met Lola in an amateur production in Argentina.

Shelf or charity shop?  A shelf of it's own.  My favourite Pedro film; parents and children, living and death, authenticity and make-believe...  these big themes are enveloped in the warm embrace of Almodóvar's film-making.  Wonderful performances from Penélope Cruz, Toni Canto, Antonia San Juan, Rosa Maria Sardá and Eloy Azorin support the unforgettable performances of Cecilia Roth and Marisa Paredes as Manuela and Huma.  Never has the colour red been so vibrantly photographed...

DVD/150: LA FLOR DE MI SECRETO (The Flower of My Secret) (Pedro Almodóvar, 1995)

LA FLOR DE MI SECRETO is from Pedro's transitional 1990s period of making films with deeper emotional resonance than those that brought him fame the previous decade, with a stronger cinematic language and more rounded characters.

Magnificent Marisa Paredes is Leo, whose obsession for her absent - physically and emotionally - army husband Paco is driving her to alcoholic despair.  Leo ghostwrites successful romance novels but cannot deliver the vacuous fodder her publisher wants as her writing is reflecting her anguish.

They reject Leo's latest novel and threaten to expose her as the real 'Amanda Gris' if she does not fulfill her contract, but Leo, who wants to write serious literature, is helped when a sympathetic magazine editor Ángel offers her a job as a literary critic.

Leo breaks down when Paco finally rejects her, but her publishers are thrilled with the 'Amanda Gris' novel they have received - but who wrote it?

Shelf or charity shop?  The ravishingly-photographed LA FLOR DE MI SECRETO surprises me every time I watch it with Marisa Paredes' wonderful performance and supporting contributions from Juan Echanove as Ángel, Imanol Arias as Paco, Rossy de Palma and Chus Lampreave so it's a keeper - Almodóvar even manages to sneak flamenco sensation Joaquín Cortés into the film in a sub-plot!

DVD/150: TACONES LEJANOS (High Heels) (Pedro Almodóvar, 1991)

After Almodóvar's initial success in the 1980s, the 1990s saw him move into more sombre storytelling with a more studied feel to the look and tone of his films as he explored melodrama, such as the family drama in TACONES LEJANOS.

Newsreader Rebeca is overjoyed to have her singer mother Becky back in Madrid after 15 years working in Mexico but is still resentful at being rejected for Becky's career and lovers.

Further problems arise because Rebeca married Manuel, one of Becky's previous lovers, and while seeing her friend Letal's drag tribute to her mother, Manuel tells Becky that he wants a divorce; meanwhile backstage, Letal has sex with Rebeca...

A month later, Manuel is murdered...Rebeca confesses but did she do it?

Colourless performances from Victoria Abril and Miguel Bosé are eclipsed by Marisa Paredes as glamorous Becky, a dry run for TODO SOBRE MI MADRE eight years later.

Shelf or charity shop?  It's worth keeping for Marisa Paredes, suffering in Armani, and the flashback to 1980s Pedro with a sudden dance routine in a women's prison led by the statuesque trans actress Bibi Andersen!

Dvd/150: ENTRE TINIEBLAS (DARK HABITS, Pedro Almodóvar, 1983)

Almodóvar's third film was made with proper film company funding which shows in the look of the film: finally Pedro finds a visual language and, although set in a convent, his use of shadows and colour make it a visual pleasure.

DARK HABITS is hampered by the dull central performance of Cristina Sánchez Pascual.  Pascual, while fine in a supporting role in LABYRINTH OF PASSION, was the film company boss' lover and her involvement was non-negotiable.

Luckily, Pedro surrounds her with sublime actresses who became his Almodóvar regulars.

Julieta Serrano is wonderful as the drug-taking, lesbian Mother Superior who gives sanctuary to singer Pascual who is implicated in her lover's death; Serano turns a cartoon character into a piercing study of lonely despair.

Memorable too are three zany nuns - masochistic Marisa Paredes, Carmen Maura (playing bongos to her pet tiger!), secret novelist Chus Lampreave - and Cecilia Roth too.

Shelf or charity shop? Despite Pascual's charisma bypass, Sisters Julieta, Carmen, Marisa and Chus make it a keeper...

Banderas is back... and Pedro's got him!

In news that will make any Almodóvar fan's heart leap up, he has reunited with his former protege for the first time since ATAME! in 1990. Antonio has gone on to a Hollywood and Broadway career but has seemed adrift in no-doubt profitable but increasingly treading-water jokey latino roles. Reunited with Pedro, it is almost a shock to see that he is capable of giving a multi-layered performance - charismatic, tortured yet deeply twisted.

Banderas plays Robert Ledgard, a respected plastic surgeon who has baffled his colleagues with what he has been working on so secretly in the hidden laboratory in his isolated mansion.

When he tells a conference that he has researched the invention of a new man-made skin which is soft to touch but resistant to fire, he is warned off by his superiors, all too mindful that he is probably still haunted by grief at the death of his wife in a car-crash and more recently, the suicide of his deranged daughter Norma.What is unknown to his colleagues is that he has gone beyond research. Locked away in a spartan bedroom in his mansion is a young woman named Vera, covered in a skin-tight bodysuit, that he has operated on for the past six years. Her only contact with the world is Ledgard and his housekeeper Marilla (Almodóvar diva Marisa Paredes) - who holds her own secret that Ledgard is her son.

This precarious world is shattered with the arrival of Marilla's second son Zeca who is on the run from the law after a failed robbery. Zeca spots Vera on a monitor and after tying up his mother, rapes the girl who he mistakes for Ledgard's wife. It turns out he and Ledgard's wife were running away together when the car crashed and Zeca escaped, leaving the wife to die in the conflagration. Ledgard returns and shoots Zeca dead. This triggers the all-important flashback that lets us know what exactly happened six years ago that led to the mysterious appearance of Vera in Legard's life.
Even by Pedro's standards, the plot is labyrinthine but you are swept along in his brio of telling a tall tale with the straightest of faces helped immeasurably by a committed cast and the combination of lush cinematography and a vivid, Hitchcockian score.

Since his stunning re-emergence with TODO SOBRE MI MADRE (All About My Mother), Pedro has proved himself to be among the greatest of directors working in cinema today, with a facility of drawing you deep within his screen-storytelling. I respond in different ways to his films: his films with female lead characters TODO SOBRE MI MADRE, VOLVER and LOS ABRAZOS ROTOS (Broken Embraces) I connect with immediately; his films with male lead characters HABLE CON ELLA (Talk To Her) and LA MALA EDUCACION (Bad Education) I have to allow to ferment and grow in my subconscious. The joy of Pedro's work is that his films allow this to happen.
Banderas' darkly menacing performance is complemented by those around him. Elena Anaya's Vera is initially seen as a mystery and it's a measure of her performance that with minimal dialogue you still stay intrigued in her which pays off at the end when she really comes into her own. It's always a joy to see Marisa Paredes and here she gives a sturdy, unflashy performance in a role that gives a core to the film - as twisted a core as that maybe.

Jan Cornet makes an impression as the young man in Vera's past and special mentions to Susi Sánchez as his mother, Bárbara Lennie as his shop assistant friend and especially Blanca Suárez as the tragic Norma.
Pedro's film - which echoes his own work as well as VERTIGO, FRANKENSTEIN and EYES WITHOUT A FACE - is given a glorious sheen by his cinematographer José Luis Alcaine whose lush and disturbing cinematography is one of the major triumphs of the film, allied to Alberto Iglesias' teasing and haunting score.

It's a mark of his taste as a filmaker that at the very end, when most film makers would go in for a big emotional screen moment, Almodóvar fades to black. Somethings are best left to the audience's imagination.

April the 3rd was Screen Diva Birthday Central!

Happy birthday to Doris Day - seen here as Ruth Etting in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, one of her greatest films who is 88 today! I hope she had the puff to blow her candles out.

A big ¡Feliz cumpleaños! to the marvellous Marisa Paredes, my second-favorite Almódovar screen siren who was 64 today.

And finally... how on earth is Sally Thomsett 60????