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Bunuel's Grandchildren
| Article
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18748 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1991 |
1,155 Words |
| Author
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Elliott Stein
Elliott Stein is a film historian, critic, and writer
currently living in New York. |
For some film buffs, the most eagerly awaited movie of 1992 is High Heels, the latest work of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. Indeed, this 42-year-old enfant terrible cineast is the only director in the long history of Spanish cinema whose international popularity is such that all of his films are automatically guaranteed widespread distribution on the world's screens.
However, while Almondovar may command a high profile at this time, he does not stand alone on the stage of accomplished Spanish film directors. The list is impressive and will, in part, be examined below.
A comedy melodrama, High Heels stars Victoria Abril, Spain's most popular actress. Meanwhile, the remake rights to two of Almodovar's earlier films have been snapped up by Hollywood: Women on the VVerge of a Nervous Breakdown, the all-time No. 1 Spanish box-office winner, will be remade by Tri Star with Jane Fonda; Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is set to be converted into an American film produced by Warner Bros.
The rise in popularity of such directors as Almodovar signaled a new wave in an industry that had undergone drastic changes since the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. Almodovar's campy comedies and erotic melodramas would have been unthinkable under the old regime. Film censorship under Franco was relentless and lasted longer than anywhere else in Western Europe. Opposition voices were banned; the acceptable genres were war epics, historical extravaganzas, and mindless musicals.
Almodovar was born in small towns in La Mancha in 1949; he grew up in the late years of the Franco regime and moved to Madrid in 1967. His first film, Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap (1980), led to seven other features: Labyrinth of Passions (1982), Dark Habits (1983), What Have I done to Deserve This? (1984), Matador (1986), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989). Almodovar is considered by many to be the spokesman for a new generation that rejects Spain's past for the pursuit of the joys of the present. "I never speak of Franco," he says. "My stories unfold as though he had never existed because for people who are fifteen or twenty years old today, all their points of reference, their traumas, the specters of their past are unrelated to the dictatorship."
If one judges merely by the commercial vagaries of distribution, Almodovar would seem to be the only game in town. Not so. The Spanish film industry
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