On Almodóvar’s World: The Endless Film

ISSN: 1931-8006 The article studies four essential elements of a film by Pedro Almodóvar: pleasure in the obscene or shocking by simultaneously presenting characters from opposite worlds; some recurrent motifs in which personal and contemporary obsessions are jumbled together: the return to the village, the pair of dumb policemen, the figure of the mother- grandmother who does not fit in the (post)modern world; the particular use of cinematographic language is a third mark of the “Almodóvar factory”: very original shots (low-angle shots, the subjectivity of machines, etc.), the incorporation of music (the lyrics of boleros), characters in a situation pressed to the limits, that is eventually resolved happily (“happyendism”); a complex plot structure, inspired by melodrama, comedy of intrigue, and drama (what has been coined as “Almodrama”), which takes pleasure in playing with tangled situations, and setting up multiple parallel plot lines that converge in a single happy ending. The use of “double,” or mirror situations allows him to accentuate in various ways his passion for contrast and provocation.