For forty years, Pedro Almodóvar has been giving us raucous, irreverent, sometimes funny glimpses into the sexual and social freedom of post-Franco Spain: Bad Education; Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!; A Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; What Have I Done to Deserve This? He's not exactly a proponent of essentialist gay identity: his gay men are usually there to have affairs with the female focus character, when she's not busy seducing her stepson. Or maybe she'll seduce her stepson and his boyfriend, or join her sister in having the affair with the gay man. There will be male nudity, urination, pop culture references, and kitsch. And these aren't comedies.
Pedro went through similar machinations in his private life, being closeted, then stating that he was bisexual, and finally coming out as gay. He's been with his partner, Fernando Iglesias, since 2002.
Dolor y gloria, Pain and Glory, is the 74-year old director's swan song, a summary and perhaps a justification of his work, touching on all of his major themes: "sentimientos, costumbrismo, reencuentros, homosexualidad, sensibilidad, pasión, familia, drogas… "
Almodóvar stand-in Salvador, played by regular star Antonio Banderas, is an aging director, in physical and mental decline. His chronic pain has kept him from new projects for several years.
Left: A misty memory of Banderas, fully nude in his first film appearance in 1982.
Asked to speak at the restoration of one of his old films, Flavor, he decides to look up the star, Alberto (Asier Etxeandia, left), whom he hasn't seen since the filming. They had a falling out over Alberto's use of heroin on the set.
While reconciling, and trying heroin himself to ease his chronic pain, he tells the story of his first boyfriend.
His First Boyfriend: Director Salvador was in a relationship with Federico, played by Leonardo Sbaraglia, in the 1980s, but ended it due to his heroin use.
Federico turned out to be one of Almodovar's temporary gay men: he left the "lifestyle" behind, moved to Argentina, married a woman, and had children.
Flavor star Alberto turns this story into a play that draws the attention of the real life Federico. He returns to Madrid and wants to start the relationship again, but Director Salvador wants to keep the past in the past.
More after the break
