In this Book

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One of world cinema’s most exciting filmmakers, Pedro Almodóvar has been delighting, provoking, arousing, shocking, and—above all—entertaining audiences around the globe since he first burst on the international film scene in the early 1980s.

All about Almodóvar
offers new perspectives on the filmmaker’s artistic vision and cinematic preoccupations, influences, and techniques. Through overviews of his oeuvre and in-depth analyses of specific films, the essays here explore a diverse range of subjects: Almodóvar’s nuanced use of television and music in his films; his reworkings of traditional film genres such as comedy, horror, and film noir; his penchant for melodrama and its relationship to melancholy, violence, and coincidence; his intricate questioning of sexual and national identities; and his increasingly sophisticated inquiries into visuality and its limits. 

Closing with Almodóvar’s own diary account of the making of Volver and featuring never-before-seen photographs from El Deseo production studio, All about Almodóvar both reflects and illuminates its subject’s dazzling eclecticism.

Contributors: Mark Allinson, U of Leicester; Pedro Almodóvar; Isolina Ballesteros, Baruch College; Leo Bersani, UC Berkeley; Marvin D’Lugo, Clark U; Ulysse Dutoit, UC Berkeley; Peter William Evans, Queen Mary U of London; Víctor Fuentes, UC Santa Barbara; Marsha Kinder, USC; Steven Marsh, U of Illinois, Chicago; Andy Medhurst, U of Sussex; Ignacio Olivia, Universidad Castilla–La Mancha, Cuenca; Paul Julian Smith, U of Cambridge; Kathleen M. Vernon, SUNY Stony Brook; Linda Williams, UC Berkeley; Francisco A. Zurián, U Carlos III, Madrid.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. Introduction
  1. Approaching Almodóvar: Thirty Years of Reinvention
  2. Brad Epps, Despina Kakoudaki
  3. pp. 1-34
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  1. I: Forms and Figures
  1. 1. Almodóvar on Television: Industry and Thematics
  2. Paul Julian Smith
  3. pp. 37-50
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  1. 2. Queer Sound: Musical Otherness in Three Films by Pedro Almodóvar
  2. Kathleen M. Vernon
  3. pp. 51-70
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  1. 3. Performing Identities in the Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar
  2. Isolina Ballesteros
  3. pp. 71-100
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  1. 4. Acts of Violence in Almodóvar
  2. Peter William Evans
  3. pp. 101-117
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  1. 5. Heart of Farce: Almodóvar’s Comic Complexities
  2. Andy Medhurst
  3. pp. 118-138
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  1. II: Melodrama and its Discontents
  1. 6. Mimesis and Diegesis: Almodóvar and the Limits of Melodrama
  2. Mark Allinson
  3. pp. 141-165
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  1. 7. Melancholy Melodrama: Almodovarian Grief and Lost Homosexual Attachments
  2. Linda Williams
  3. pp. 166-192
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  1. 8. Intimate Strangers: Melodrama and Coincidence in Talk to Her
  2. Despina Kakoudaki
  3. pp. 193-238
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  1. The Limits Of Representation
  1. 9. Almodóvar’s Girls
  2. Leo Bersani, Ulysse Dutoit
  3. pp. 241-266
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  1. 10. All about the Brothers: Retroseriality in Almodóvar’s Cinema
  2. Marsha Kinder
  3. pp. 267-294
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  1. 11. Blind Shots and Backward Glances: Reviewing Matador and Labyrinth of Passion
  2. Brad Epps
  3. pp. 295-338
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  1. 12. Missing a Beat: Syncopated Rhythms and Subterranean Subjects in the Spectral Economy of Volver
  2. Steven Marsh
  3. pp. 339-356
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  1. 13. Postnostalgia in Bad Education: Written on the Body of Sara Montiel
  2. Marvin D’lugo
  3. pp. 357-386
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  1. IV: The Auteur In Context
  1. 14. Inside Almodóvar
  2. Ignacio Oliva
  3. pp. 389-407
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  1. 15. Pepi, Patty, and Beyond: Cinema and Literature in Almodóvar
  2. Francisco A. Zurian
  3. pp. 408-428
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  1. 16. Bad Education: Fictional Autobiography and Meta–Film Noir
  2. Victor Fuentes
  3. pp. 429-445
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  1. Coda
  1. Volver: A Filmmaker’s Diary
  2. Pedro Almodóvar
  3. pp. 446-464
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  1. Filmography of Pedro Almodóvar
  2. pp. 465-466
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 467-470
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 471-496
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