Throughout his career, celebrated Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar has shocked audiences with frisky comedies and sexually tense dramas. He centered stories on the experiences of heartbroken women, headstrong mothers, Spain’s LGBTQ+ community (finally free post-Franco), and just about anyone harboring forbidden desires and dreams of revenge. While some autobiographical inspirations made it into these earlier movies, for the past decade, Almodóvar has turned much of his focus inward, making movies about his life, complicated relationships, creative process, and memories of those who inspired him.
In a recent interview with The A.V. Club, Almodóvar says he was moving on from his self-reflective work, closing yet another chapter in his storied career for something new. “I’m not going to write about any directors,” he said. “I’m going to go outside of my home.” By leaving this self-reflective period, Almodóvar is closing one of the deepest periods any filmmaker has spent reflecting on their own creative and personal lives through their work. During this time, even films based on existing source material became windows into Almodóvar’s inner world.
Almodóvar’s 20th film, Julieta, was the bridge between his earlier career and the journey of self-reflection he embarked on over the last decade. After the airplane comedy I’m So Excited!, Almodóvar returned to his melodramatic roots: Julieta follows its title character in two different times in her life, with the role played by two different actresses, Emma Suárez as the older Julieta and Adriana Ugarte as her younger self. A chance encounter on a Madrid street leads Julieta to reach out to her estranged daughter, unlocking old memories and past regrets, confronting death and illness along the way.
Although the film is an adaptation of three Alice Munro short stories, they are unmistakenably adapted by Almodóvar. From the creative use of a “story within the story” in flashbacks to the bright use of color, the movie clearly belongs to its director. Already, he is reflecting on his rich career, bringing back many of his past collaborators and inspirations. Julieta features Almodóvar regular Rossy de Palma in a small role, something she continues to do in Bitter Christmas, while one of Almodóvar’s most prominent musical muses, Chavela Vargas, also returns. A musical inspiration for Almodóvar throughout his ’90s films, Vargas’ return in reflective works like Julieta, Pain And Glory, and Bitter Christmas is yet another way he has been reaching back into his past for both inspiration and to pay tribute to those who inspired him.
But Almodóvar’s most personal film, from this period or otherwise, remains the aforementioned Pain And Glory. The movie follows a director played by Antonio Banderas, an early Almodóvar star, as an illness causes him to reflect on his childhood, his relationship, and his work. In flashback, another Almodóvar alum, Penélope Cruz, plays the director’s mother. Almodóvar is getting the metatextual band back together, telling a story that’s not dissimilar from his own. In addition to coping with multiple ailments, the director, Salvador, is navigating a fraught relationship with an estranged former collaborator, who introduces Salvador to heroin to manage his pain.
A theme of regret runs heavily through Almodóvar’s filmography, and possibly deepest through Pain And Glory. The regret is not one that can be fixed or ignored, but like the director’s injury, must be faced head-on. When a former lover arrives to possibly rekindle their affair after decades away, Salvador suggests perhaps its best to leave that in the past and let their reconnection heal them. In addressing the loss of his mother, he comes to terms with their frayed relationship over the years, but still regrets he could not bring her back to their village to die at home, mirroring the strong feelings of grief and regret Almodóvar had to navigate after the death of his own mother.
Almodóvar once again explores the rich dynamics of motherhood, and reunites with Cruz, in Parallel Mothers, a film about babies swapped at birth and families searching for answers in the wake of the Spanish Civil War. The connection may seem tenuous, but it’s a reflection on how deep the scars of the Civil War remain on the country’s psyche. While Almodóvar may have been too young for the Civil War itself, he grew up in the shadow of the Franco regime and his earliest works were colorful punk-fueled manifestos against fascist conformity. Parallel Mothers is a more mature reflection on the aching desire for answers in this aftermath—of families wanting to know the truth and be made whole again.
While Almodóvar’s next film, The Room Next Door, was another adaptation (finding its basis in Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through), it too is preoccupied with death, regret, and relationships. Almodóvar’s English-language debut follows two old friends (Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore) who reconnect when one becomes ill with terminal cancer. Spending time together, they grow closer than ever before, just as one of them is about ready to take illicit euthanasia pills before the pain of her illness incapacitates her. As always, Almodóvar’s setting and production is deeply stylish and manicured, almost softening the blow of knowing that this story can only end in the certain death of one of these friends. The challenge for the survivor is how to carry out her dying friend’s wishes to the end. Thinking of the many friends Almodóvar has had to say goodbye to over the years, including figures like Chavela Vargas, gives The Room Next Door an extra layer of poignancy.
Despite his prolific output, Almodóvar has been drawing this period to a close over the last decade. He released a collection of autobiographical short stories called The Last Dream and his latest film, Bitter Christmas, caps this self-reflective period by questioning the very nature of using autobiographical sources for inspiration in the first place. The directors of that film’s parallel stories end up hurting the ones they love or who love them because searching for the muse violates the social contract between storyteller and subject. In short, the people around the main characters don’t want to be just inspirational fodder for the creatives’ next projects. They want to be seen for who they are, completing the journey Almodóvar embarked on with Pain And Glory: Humanizing the man behind the camera, laying bare his deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities so that the mythical all-powerful director is nothing more than a mere mortal.
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