Volver Revisited

The song Volver, which gave Pedro Almodóvar's film Volver the title and the stand-alone song, was sung in the film in a flamenco version by Estrella Morente (and lip synced by Penélope Cruz)



There is an amazing version on her website (go to Multimedia).

However originally, this song is an Argentinian Tango... here sung by Carlos Gardel:

Pilgrimage to Los Abrazos Rotos

We used Pentecost Sunday¹ to travel to Fribourg in the French speaking part of Switzerland, because there, Pedro Almodóvar's Los Abrazos Rotos is already on show. We went to the afternoon show. So we could go for dinner afterwards and still travel home comfortably by train. One should not stress out on Pentecost.

We both loved the film² and both agreed that it will be hard to wait the almost 3 months until it will open in Zürich to see it again. In the first viewing, I just dive into an Almodóvar and float with it. In at least one of the viewings I blind out the storyline and dialogues an solely concentrate on the set design. Or as Variety puts it: Every richly hued wall is covered with eye-candy artwork, every doorway reps a second level of framing, and there is beauty even in the scattered contents of a drawer or in a pile of torn-up photos.

I saw my first Almodóvar in 1987. This was La ley del deseo and it disturbed me emotionally far more than Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma by Pasolini. I had never seen anything alike. Since then, I'm constantly moaning that Almodóvar is not making more films.

It has been even longer since I've been to Fribourg. It was in Summer 1985, I remember this, because Live Aid was on, just as we left for it, and my bicycle had a defect when we were approaching the town.

We had some difficulties to find a restaurant offering local food. But eventually we succeeded. Toño settled for a plat fribourgeois and I chose steak de cheval.



¹ Pentecost Monday is also a holiday.
² A Irish friend who was born and raised in Spain recently complained that one is treated like a heretic when one says something bad about a film by Almodóvar (she hasn't even seen Volver yet, how dare she?).

Waiting for Los Abrazos Rotos

I've just learned that we will have to wait until August 13, 2009 until Pedro Almodóvar's Los Abrazos Rotos will run in our cinemas. However, in the Romandy, it has been on show for almost a week. I might have to plan a trip to the west in due course.

Más información sobre esta película

Los Abrazos Rotos

Pedro Almodóvar's new drama Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces) premièred this week in Spain.

The film centres on a four-way tale of dangerous love, and was shot in the style of a hard-boiled 1950s American film noir. A man (Lluis Omar) writes, lives and loves in the darkness. He was the victim of a brutal car accident fourteen years ago in Lanzarote. Not only did he lose his sight, but also the woman of his life, Lena (Penelope Cruz). He was a movie director, and Lena was his main actress and his lover, although she lived with a successful mogul (José Luis Gómez)

Más información sobre esta película

No release date for Switzerland has been announced so far. However, I excpect it in august. As kind of my personal birthday present by Almodóvar.

Read more about the film in EL PAÍS' Almodóvar and opinion sections.
Read more about the Spanish title in just some words.

Deflowered

I heard the first time of Pedro Almodóvar in the week of 22 June 1987 in the German magazine DER SPIEGEL in an article with the headline 'Darling Scumbag'. It was less the headline and the fact that they called him scandal director than the touching still of two bollock-naked men closely entangled in bed shot from the ceiling that the article cought my eye and burned itself into my memory for good. Of course, I had to see La ley del deseo - the law of desire - and every other film Pedro Almodóvar made ever since.



Yesterday, we saw La ley del deseo again. It still has not lost any of its disturbing power.