Pedro Almod­ó­var: Anato­my of Desire

A cool, steady breeze car­ries a per­fume of fresh bread and jamón from a near­by pastel­ería up a slum­ber­ing Madrid back­street to the front door of El Deseo. It’s a cloudy day in June, and the mir­rored rows of plain apart­ment build­ings that hem this sub­ur­ban vein are pas­sive in the dull light. The glass and steel-knit exte­ri­or of Pedro Almodóvar’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny head­quar­ters is mod­ern but teas­ing­ly incon­spic­u­ous, starv­ing you for the sen­su­al ban­quet that awaits.

As if spit­ing the unsea­son­able weath­er, inside El Deseo is a kalei­do­scop­ic metrop­o­lis of colour and light. Posters of the writer/director’s films dress the walls like fam­i­ly por­traits while pot plants sway in the misty emis­sions of desk­top dehu­mid­i­fiers. The place has an infec­tious, har­mo­nious ener­gy about it.

For all the mate­r­i­al opu­lence of his art deco office space, how­ev­er, Almod­ó­var him­self cuts an unas­sum­ing fig­ure. He’s 62 in Sep­tem­ber – almost exact­ly one month after The Skin I Live In is released – but a shocked sil­ver bouf­fant is all that dis­tin­guish­es him today from the qui­et mule-driver’s son who rose from impov­er­ished sur­round­ings to lead ​‘La Movi­da’, the cul­tur­al renais­sance that trans­formed Spain dur­ing the 1980s.

Yet what’s most strik­ing on first impres­sion is that, 32 years and 18 films into his career, Spain’s most dec­o­rat­ed work­ing film­mak­er meets ques­tions about the shap­ing of his artis­tic iden­ti­ty – about grow­ing up in La Man­cha, about the women in his films and the moth­er who would become a the­mat­ic cor­ner­stone, about chal­leng­ing the mores of post-Fran­co Spain, about faith and sex­u­al­i­ty – with such sparkling enthusiasm.

“La Man­cha, you have to under­stand, was a ter­ri­bly harsh, aus­tere place to live in back then. It was all about pure sur­vival in post-war Spain, which was a peri­od that went on and on, last­ing about 20 to 25 years until the mid ​’60s when eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment final­ly took hold. It was a real­ly bleak peri­od in our history.

“The peo­ple who made an impres­sion on me then were the female fig­ures,” he reflects. ​“My moth­er, the female neigh­bours, they were the ones who were capa­ble, the ones who were the strug­glers and the fight­ers. And in fact they were the ones that lift­ed up the coun­try; they were the ones that allowed Spain to sur­vive through all of the hard­ships of that post-Civ­il War peri­od. They were the ones that had to be very crafty and imag­i­na­tive, always hav­ing to invent some new way of subsisting.

“La Man­cha at the time was a very, very con­ser­v­a­tive part of the coun­try to live in. Very chau­vin­is­tic, as well, very male-dom­i­nat­ed in its atti­tudes. But men nev­er realised that it was actu­al­ly the women who were run­ning the house­hold; they were the ones in charge.” He con­tin­ues, allud­ing to the for­ma­tive impact of this col­lec­tive matri­ar­chal mus­cle: ​“I think that came through in the films that I made because it was part of my own nat­ur­al make­up. I was sur­round­ed by all these women and they were the ones that real­ly made me.”

Almod­ó­var has remained dogged­ly loy­al to his roots. The rare occa­sions on which he’s strayed from his provin­cial pulse have been fol­lowed by cer­e­mo­ni­ous, large­ly tri­umphant, returns – to the vil­lage, to the women and the actress­es that have inspired him and in turn been ele­vat­ed by him. Trace back from his most recent auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal out­ing, 2006’s Volver (lit­er­al­ly mean­ing ​‘to come back’), to his delec­tably kitsch 1980 debut Pepi, Luci, Bom and Oth­er Girls Like Mom and you’ll see the pattern.

Whether revis­it­ing peo­ple and places, recy­cling themes or los­ing him­self in the wilds of his youth, Almod­ó­var has long been an habit­u­al film­mak­er. Con­sis­ten­cy is the key to his crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess, not to men­tion his pro­longed inde­pen­dence. Now, how­ev­er, he’s bro­ken tra­di­tion by devel­op­ing a bor­rowed sto­ry. Thier­ry Jonquet’s ​‘Taran­tu­la’ tells of a nefar­i­ous plas­tic sur­geon who keeps his lover under lock and key in his lux­u­ri­ous Le Vésinet château. It’s pacy and robust, ripe for big screen adap­ta­tion. A twist­ing, snarling revenge thriller that’s dis­qui­et­ing­ly seduc­tive in its nar­ra­tive ugliness.

Almod­ó­var picked up ​‘Taran­tu­la’ near­ly 10 years ago, read it, then dis­card­ed it. His first and only pre­vi­ous adap­ta­tion, 1997’s Live Flesh, had tak­en its toll both phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly, only reme­died by the euphor­ic recep­tion to All About My Moth­er – the film that final­ly won Almod­ó­var the acknowl­edg­ment of the Cannes jury and US Acad­e­my – two years lat­er. But was this cal­cu­lat­ed pro­cras­ti­na­tion or a more straight­for­ward case of hes­i­ta­tion? ​“The best way to make an adap­ta­tion is to read it once and then for­get it,” he asserts, ​“it will come back to you when it is necessary.”

This may seem like an unortho­dox approach, but the per­son­al­i­ty of Jonquet’s prose was always fat­ed to yield to Almodóvar’s vision. ​“It’s much more dif­fi­cult for me to make an adap­ta­tion because I think very freely. I’m glad we shot the movie, but the writ­ing process was awful. When I wrote the script there were moments that I saw many, many com­pli­ca­tions with­in the plot and I actu­al­ly found myself fight­ing against the nov­el. It’s true that these types of nov­els can be very fun to read, but when you look at it with a view to adapt­ing, you dis­cov­er many things that don’t work.”

Despite the numer­ous tweaks, Almod­ó­var has kept the core set-up of ​‘Taran­tu­la’ intact, mean­ing that The Skin I Live In runs against the grain by fea­tur­ing an alpha male as its pri­ma­ry char­ac­ter. Anto­nio Ban­deras is shrewd­ly cast as Robert, the scalpel-hap­py antag­o­nist, but what prompt­ed Almod­ó­var to reunite with his for­mer male muse 21 years after Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!? ​“When­ev­er you work with an actor or actress and it works very well then you always want to go back and work with them again, and he’s like part of my artis­tic fam­i­ly,” replies Almodóvar.

“It was the moment to do it because of the char­ac­ter,” he con­tin­ues. ​“One of [Antonio’s] char­ac­ter­is­tics is he’s incred­i­bly skil­ful; par­tic­u­lar­ly with his hands. If you think about the char­ac­ter he’s a man who’s very skil­ful; he’s a man who’s trans­form­ing people’s bod­ies and Anto­nio is very skil­ful. When he made Zor­ro, he had a very old train­er – the same train­er that Errol Fly­nn had – and he said that Anto­nio was the best actor that he had met. He knew what to do with a sword; he was the best, very phys­i­cal­ly agile.”

Whether sutur­ing cuts of genet­i­cal­ly tai­lored skin, splic­ing DNA or coil­ing wire around the infan­tile limbs of a bon­sai tree, Robert’s del­i­cate, pre­cise touch is in equal parts chill­ing and mes­mer­ic. But there’s more to this reunion than a steady grip. ​“I real­ly want­ed Robert, even though he is evil, to look real­ly good. I want­ed to have some­one very suave and dap­per. And Anto­nio is still very attrac­tive. Okay, he’s knock­ing 50, but he still looks real­ly great; he looks nor­mal in the char­ac­ter he plays. It was time to go back and offer him a role again, and I was lucky that it was the same time that he’d decid­ed that he want­ed to come back and do anoth­er film in Spain, in Spanish.”

As well as the oppor­tu­ni­ty to team up with an old friend, the char­ac­ter of Robert enabled Almod­ó­var to broad­en his hori­zons and explore new ground; name­ly sci­ence-fic­tion, a genre alien in his cat­a­logue of fiery romance and domes­tic melo­dra­ma. Though osten­si­bly a Franken­stein body hor­ror, The Skin I Live In is under­pinned by real sci­ence. In an ear­ly scene we see Robert graft­ing a patch­work of pros­thet­ic skin in a Kubrick­ian lab­o­ra­to­ry, deep in the bow­els of his Tole­do man­sion (where the action has been relo­cat­ed). At this point we know noth­ing of his sin­is­ter intent. Almod­ó­var is sim­ply set­ting the scene; rel­ish­ing every mea­sured pinch of a pipette, every Petri dish stain, hop­ing to catch the birth of some genet­ic mir­a­cle. With the con­ver­sa­tion turn­ing to trans­ge­n­e­sis, Almodóvar’s eyes widen.

“Right now trans­ge­n­e­sis, this genet­ic ther­a­py, is being used in prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing – apart from in human beings,” he explains. ​“Although peo­ple are aware that it could be used, it could be some­thing that could be so help­ful in get­ting rid of all these ill­ness­es, to help with can­cer patients. But there’s a mas­sive moral ques­tion mark over ther­a­pies like this because if we actu­al­ly start­ed using it for human beings then we will be able to decide exact­ly how future human beings will be; what their chil­dren will be like. We’ll be able to pick their char­ac­ter­is­tics and I think once that hap­pens then that will take us into a whole new area.

“If you think about his­to­ry, all through­out his­to­ry human beings have suf­fered from dis­as­ters – nor­mal­ly caused by peo­ple who are just off their heads, absolute­ly crazy peo­ple. Just imag­ine Hitler, what he would do if he had the pow­er to use some­thing like trans­ge­n­e­sis and to be able to cre­ate a world made to mea­sure to his ideals.” Almod­ó­var shiv­ers at the thought, com­pos­es him­self, and gets deep­er. ​“If that ever starts to hap­pen then where will the exis­tence of God be? What about Cre­ation? Trans­ge­n­e­sis will almost wipe them away com­plete­ly. I don’t know to what extent the code of con­duct that exists now in the way peo­ple who per­form bioethics can stop this hap­pen­ing, but I think sci­ence will move forward.

“Even if peo­ple have reser­va­tions now about the direc­tion it will go in, I think it will car­ry on and maybe in 50, 60, 70 years time peo­ple will start to use these ther­a­pies and then God and Cre­ation will dis­ap­pear from the whole pic­ture.” But what of his own beliefs? Does Almod­ó­var live in fear of trans­ge­n­e­sis, or is he ready to embrace it? ​“It’s a real­ly del­i­cate mat­ter. If trans­ge­n­e­sis is being used for good, for these so-called mir­a­cle chil­dren that can be healthy because they are able to get trans­plants from mem­bers of their fam­i­ly, then it’s real­ly some­thing that should be fun­da­men­tal for treat­ing fatal ill­ness­es. But I’m so afraid that peo­ple will not use it prop­er­ly, that there’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty that peo­ple will design made-to-mea­sure chil­dren. I don’t think we should be doing that now.

“On the oth­er hand, it’s a very attrac­tive idea to think that we may be mov­ing into a future with­out reli­gion. Not just Catholi­cism; what I mean is we’d have a reli­gion-free world. In oth­er words, no more of the neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions that reli­gions have in the world today. I think we’re all the prod­uct of chance. Once the life-giv­ing cell is dis­cov­ered, every­thing that’s per­pet­u­at­ed through reli­gion will dis­ap­pear com­plete­ly. I think we’re on the brink of the dawn of a new type of mankind.”

The air around us is now charged. Almod­ó­var has just set out his stall and shared his most inti­mate polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal views with star­tling can­did­ness. These facets of his per­son­al­i­ty are ordi­nar­i­ly veiled by the rich idio­syn­crat­ic lus­tre of his films, or else instilled in sub­tle metaphors and dis­guised rhetoric. But that’s not to say he is shy about express­ing them off-camera.

Indeed, he has a rep­u­ta­tion in Spain for show­ing his vit­ri­olic dis­dain for many of the country’s fore­most polit­i­cal fig­ures of the past three decades. He heav­i­ly crit­i­cised José María Aznar over the for­mer leader’s for­eign and cul­tur­al poli­cies – cul­mi­nat­ing in a pub­lic apol­o­gy in 2004 for com­ments he made about the behav­iour of Aznar’s Par­tido Pop­u­lar fol­low­ing the Madrid bomb­ings on March 11.

The cine elite has also felt Almodóvar’s scorn. In 1985 he attacked the Cannes selec­tors for, as he saw it, their bla­tant snob­bery towards Span­ish cin­e­ma. Per­haps it’s no sur­prise that it took him the best part of 20 years to pick up his first Palme d’Or nom­i­na­tion (he’s now a reg­u­lar fix­ture at Cannes; Volver, Bro­ken Embraces and The Skin I Live In have all screened in com­pe­ti­tion). It’s no coin­ci­dence that it has been Almodóvar’s most recent films that have exalt­ed him as an auteur of transcon­ti­nen­tal appeal, how­ev­er – The Skin I Live In is his most ambi­tious film in years.

And yet there’s an inse­cu­ri­ty obscured by this effort­less mas­ter­class in filmic com­po­si­tion, with Almod­ó­var admit­ting that but­ter­flies still gath­er when the time comes to call ​‘acción!’ on a new project. ​“When I start shoot­ing a new film I nev­er feel that I’m real­ly able to go ahead and get through it. This is film num­ber 18 – I should feel con­fi­dent and com­fort­able with what I’m doing but you nev­er have that cer­tain­ty when you start. I don’t have that cer­tain­ty when I start a film because a film is a liv­ing being itself, it has a life of itself, and it’s full of oth­er peo­ple as well.

“Those peo­ple can also influ­ence the direc­tion that the film moves in and you have to be con­stant­ly keep­ing tabs and mak­ing sure you’re in con­trol of the film in case it’s been led else­where. I think [François] Truf­faut summed it up real­ly well: he said it was like being on a run­away train because the brakes have failed and the direc­tor is the only one who can stop that train going off the tracks. That’s how it feels some­times. How’s it going to turn out? You just don’t know.

“What I do know is I’m going to give it my all,” he says emphat­i­cal­ly. ​“I put my whole heart and soul into a film, 24 hours a day. I com­plete­ly devote my life to mak­ing that film and that should give you some con­fi­dence about the way things are going to turn out. The oth­er thing that I’m absolute­ly cer­tain about is I still feel pas­sion for film­mak­ing; I still feel the same pas­sion as I did when I made film num­ber one.”

That Almod­ó­var was an anar­chic extro­vert who exploit­ed cin­e­ma as a means of pro­vok­ing social change. He’s soft­er, more strate­gic now. The fem­i­nine intu­ition that gave his ear­ly Super 8 shorts and unre­leased 1978 fea­ture Folle… folle… fólleme Tim! such potent flavour has dilut­ed over time. The sub­jects and char­ac­ters that fas­ci­nate him most – fam­i­ly, love, pow­er, rapists, pros­ti­tutes, trans­sex­u­als, psy­chopaths and vic­tims – are still there, just less assertive, less pal­pa­bly grotesque. But while Almod­ó­var dis­miss­es the notion that age is a tourni­quet for cre­ativ­i­ty, have the mar­gins of his pas­sion shifted?

“I’m still work­ing with the same free­dom that I’ve always worked with and the same pas­sion, but pas­sion when you’re more mature is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to when you’re young. When you’re young you’re thought­less and you’re care­free and pas­sion can be some­thing you can embrace, like when you fall in love. Now that I’m old­er I’m aware of the pas­sion that I feel. If you’re 25 and you fall in love with some­one, you just go ahead and take it and run with it. When you’re old­er you still feel that pas­sion, that love, but you’re weighed down by the pres­sure of all the uncer­tain­ty around it. Adult pas­sions are not the same at all.”

This self-aware­ness has unques­tion­ably for­ti­fied Almodóvar’s film­mak­ing ide­ol­o­gy, yet he still describes each film he makes as a ​‘learn­ing curve’; a means of com­pil­ing his myr­i­ad ideas and inspi­ra­tions into a cohe­sive form that’s anchored by an insa­tiable lust for knowl­edge. As our dis­cus­sion con­tin­ues down this self-reflex­ive avenue, Almod­ó­var skims over The Skin I Live In’s influ­ences in tan­gents. Giv­en the time, you get the sense he’d hap­pi­ly decon­struct every scene.

Georges Franju’s 1960 Eyes With­out a Face and Don Siegel’s orig­i­nal 1956 Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers are offered as more direct points of ref­er­ence, while Alfred Hitch­cock and Luis Buñuel sea­son the mix. Nods to under­ground comics (Almod­ó­var is, after all, a trans­me­dia mas­ter: he cut his teeth with the exper­i­men­tal the­atre group Los Goliar­dos while pen­ning arti­cles for coun­ter­cul­ture mag­a­zines and lat­er main­stream peri­od­i­cals such as El País under the pseu­do­nym ​‘Pat­ty Diphusa’), Cold War thrillers and silent film noirs (“I real­ly want­ed to make some­thing along the lines of a Fritz Lang black-and-white movie”) fol­low. There are doubt­less many others.

These influ­ences, by Almodóvar’s own admis­sion, have not always been trans­par­ent in his work. Yet a final panora­ma of his office reveals a man of exten­sive taste – books on Paul Ver­ho­even and Michael Mann proud­ly inter­sperse hard­back spines etched with ​‘Maru­ja Mal­lo’, ​‘Miquel Barceló‘, and oth­er more obvi­ous local dig­ni­taries. His films may chime with a Cel­to-His­pan­ic lan­guage all of their own, but his devo­tion to cin­e­ma extends far beyond the con­tours of La Mancha.

Still, for the moment Almod­ó­var seems whol­ly con­tent at home. And why not? This unpre­ten­tious inner-city sanc­tu­ary has nur­tured his imag­i­na­tion since 1986 and it looks set to stoke his cre­ative pas­sion for many years to come. No won­der he named it El Deseo: it means ​‘desire’.