La piel que habito
Dedicating a retrospective to Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar means bringing light to a major cinematographic work, all together definitively cinephile, popular and exhilarating. This fierce artisan of film staging is carried by characters driven with vivid forces that often take them away from comfort and push them to discover brand new facets of themselves. They are then transformed, by means of love or disillusion. Coming back, they put conventional opinions at rest, shaping genders and social constraints. The art of filming does the rest.
Robert Ledgard, a plastic surgeon, develops a synthetic skin, a revolutionary practice that reinforces his fame. But he keeps secret the tests he has conducted on a female guinea pig, Vera, who lives reclusively in his mansion in the Toledo region.
Pedro Almodóvar
Born in 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain, Pedro Almodóvar had a provincial childhood, marked by a strong women presence and a religious education. At the age of 18, he moved to Madrid and worked various jobs while immersed in the Madrid movida, a creative and fiery cultural movement that coincided with the democratic transition. He was introduced to theater, performance and writing in counterculture circles, and even wrote Patty Diphusa, a landmark novel in the emerging homosexual literature. In the 70s, he began directing short and then feature films. Initially noticed by the underground milieu, the filmmaker has a growing success in Spain. In 1986, he co-founded the production company El Deseo with his brother, and two years later, Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown brought him international fame, which has never waned since.
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La folle aventure
Dans la longue carrière du cinéaste espagnol Pedro Almodovar, parsemée de bons et de moins bons coups,*** Parle avec elle*** demeure son meilleur film pour plusieurs raisons. L’une d’entre elles permet justement de comprendre en quoi tient la réussite de son plus récent long métrage, La peau que j’habite: c’est l’habileté à rendre compte de l’horreur, dont les traits sont dévoilés lentement au fil de l’intrigue, par des révélations, des flash-back...