Dark Habits (Pedro Almodóvar, 1983)

Julieta Serrano and Cristina Sánchez Pascual in Dark Habits

Cast: Cristina Sánchez Pascual, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave, Marisa Paredes, Carmen Maura, Lina Canalejas, Mary Carillo, Berta Riaza, Manuel Zarzo, Cecilia Roth. Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar. Cinematography: Ángel Luis Fernández. Film editing: José Salcedo.

What is it that makes nuns funny? Is it just their anachronistic appearance, their ostensible modesty and piety in a culture that is anything but modest and pious? The nuns in Pedro Almodóvar's Dark Habits are certainly modest in dress, though one of them creates outré fashion designs (with the help of the parish priest). And they're pious enough to adopt self-mortifying names like Sister Sewer Rat (Chus Lampreave), Sister Manure (Marisa Paredes), Sister Damned (Carmen Maura), and Sister Snake (Lina Canalejas). But they also shoot heroin, drop LSD, and write salacious popular fiction. They run a retreat for wayward women like Yolanda (Cristina Sánchez Pascual), who brought about the death of a friend when she sold him some poisoned heroin and is on the run from the police. It's to Almodóvar's credit that he keeps the film going once the shock humor of these characters' secret lives is delivered, although there's not much more to Dark Habits than a comic take on transgressive behavior. At best, the movie is a sketch for the later, more involving Almodóvar films to come.  

Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar, 2019)

Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Nora Navas, Julieta Serrano, César Vicente, Asier Flores, Penélope Cruz, Cecilia Roth, Susi Sánchez, Raúl Arévalo, Pedro Casablanc. Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar. Cinematography: José Luis Alcaine. Production design: Antxón Gómez. Film editing: Teresa Font. Music: Alberto Iglesias.

Film puts us in an eternal now, letting us see people and places out of time. One moment we may be watching the handsome young Antonio Banderas in Matador (Pedro Almodóvar, 1986) and the next the grizzled Banderas, on the cusp of 60, in Almodóvar's Pain and Glory. Which is one reason filmmakers are so obsessed with traveling through time, whether in the sci-fi mode or in the autobiographical one. Banderas has so often been identified with Almodóvar that it would be unthinkable for the director to make a movie about an aging director, struggling with the weight of time and guilt that has taken a toll on his body and his career, without casting Banderas in the role. Both director and star work through the pain to achieve a measure of glory in this film, one of the best in the oeuvre of either artist. The great achievement of Almodóvar in this film is to take a well-worn theme, the intersection of art and life, and make it fresh and revelatory. It's unmistakably an Almodóvar film, containing the vivid use of color we identify with his work -- and that of his production designer, Antxón Gómez -- as well as his frankness about his own sins and misdemeanors. But it's also a Banderas film, with that actor's sly undercutting of his personal beauty and charisma, seldom before so brilliantly employed, except in Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In (2011). It earned him an overdue Oscar nomination. The film ends with a witty surprise, which is not only a sly trick but also underscores its thematic content.

Matador (Pedro Almodóvar, 1986)

Nacho Martínez and Assumpta Serna in Matador

Cast: Assumpta Serna, Antonio Banderas, Nacho Martínez, Eva Cobo, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave, Carmen Maura, Eusebio Poncela. Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar, Jesús Ferrero. Cinematography: Ángel Luis Fernández. Production design: Fernando Sánchez. Film editing: José Salcedo. Music: Andrés Vicente Gómez.

Pedro Almodóvar was just getting established as a major filmmaker -- his big breakthrough, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, would come in 1988 -- when he released Matador, a film whose spicy stew of eccentrically transgressive characters, sex, and violence, all treated with a comic vision, led critics to compare him to Luis Buñuel. It has become more clear that Almodóvar is his own man, whatever the influences may have been. 

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988)

Pedro Almodóvar's brightly colored farce Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown put him on the map as an auteur to be reckoned with. It's a grand stew of a film that takes the premise of Jean Cocteau's serious play La Voix Humaine and turns it into a nod to classic Hollywood screwball comedy touched with feminism and the brand of liberated hedonism peculiar to post-Franco Spain. It's also a superb product of the gay sensibility, to the point that it's easy to imagine the roles of Pepa (Carmen Maura), Candela (Maria Barranco), Marisa (Rossy de Palma), and Lucia (Julieta Serrano) played by drag queens. But although it verges on camp -- Pepa, a soap opera actress, dubs Joan Crawford's voice in a Spanish release of Nicholas Ray's perhaps unintentionally camp Western Johnny Guitar (1954) -- it has at its core Almodóvar's genuine affection for his characters. The gloriously sunny decor of the film is the product of set decorators José Salcedo and Félix Murcia, and the costumes are by José María de Cossío. The cinematographer is Almodóvar's frequent collaborator José Luis Alcaine.