All About Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema (review)

With over 30 years of work, this director from La Mancha is internationally appealing but influenced locally, a market pleaser but intensively subversive at once. This mix of contradictions makes him incredibly unique in his talent for controversial themes, genres, and film conventions: a convoluted visual production that has reinforced his fame but also befuddled and entertained spectators and critics alike. Understanding his "authorial signature" (Epps 24) might seem a daring task not only for others, but also for himself: as Almodóvar admits, "there is a moment, during each of the processes involved in making a film, when I go to pieces and think that I have irretrievably lost control of my movie" (457). So much has been written about him and his films—and yet there is so much to explore. Understanding the filmography of this Spanish director involves, as Brad Epps defends, the need to "review, over and again, amid all the unseen and unseeable gaps and divisions" (330) in order to surpass the illusion of chaos it creates at first.

This book, edited by Brad Epps and Despina Kakoudaki, scholars with previous publications on the theme, combines essays by prominent intellectuals in distinct disciplines (film critics, literature Hispanists and cultural studies scholars) (12) acting in both the U.S. and Spanish academia. Authors such as Marvin D'Lugo, Paul Julian Smith, and Mark Allison might ring a bell because of their previous volumes on Almodóvar, but the book goes beyond this by also putting those texts in dialogue with those of intellectuals with different areas of expertise. This publication also adds to the field for its inclusion of two more recent films, La Mala Educación and Volver, which critics such as Ignacio Oliva consider to reflective of a third, self-reflexive phase in this director's career (393). Whereas each individual essay contributes toward a better understanding of specific issues in Almodóvar's work (identity, aggressive sexuality, etc.), this exploration of theoretical issues are complemented by a helpful introduction, offering an overview of his work and main issues to be addressed throughout the volume.

The book is thematically divided in sections: the first part, called "Forms and Figures," covers the director's influence, style, the use of media, and genres noticeable in his work. One such provocative essay is Peter Williams Evans, which aims at exploring the use of violent sexuality in Almodóvar—a theme that has been much discussed and often misunderstood as antifeminism (111). Another insightful perspective is Andy Medhurst's analysis of Almodóvar's work under the categories of tragedy and comedy, showing the ambiguity of modes in his movies.

In part II, "Melodrama and its discontents," themes such as genres and auteurism are explored. In this section, Linda Williams collaborates with an eye-opening reading of Tacones Lejanos under the influence of Judith Butler's Psychic Life of Power and the concept of lost homosexual attachments in heterosexual gender identities (172).

Part III is called "The Limits of Representation," and it offers a reading on the gaps of the unsaid in Almodóvar's work—"veiling and counter-veiling in Volver" (Steven Marsh), or the concept of Postnostalgia in La Mala Educación, by analyzing the crisis of memory suffered in recent Spain (D'Lugo 383), among other issues.

The fifth and last section is entitled "The Auteur in Context," and it provides pertinent information about his biography, creation process, transition eras, and it contributes towards an understanding of Almodóvar's works as a whole. For this purpose, Francisco A. Zurián's "Pepi, Patty, and Beyond" is one such insightful essays, standing out because of its clearer thesis and cohesion.

At last, there is Almodóvar's diary on Volver—" Coda"—rounding off this group of essays with the voice of the director himself—and thus explaining more about his own creation process.

In general, the book offers a deep treatment of themes, mostly containing well-documented theoretical analysis. As...