A colorful journey through the life and work of Pedro Almodóvar comes exclusively to CurtaOn – Clube de Documentários, the streaming platform of the Curta! channel.
The long documentary “Pedro Almodóvar – The rebel of La Mancha”, unreleased in Brazil, provides a detailed overview of the Spanish filmmaker’s trajectory.
Your journey starts from the small Calzada de Calatrava, a town located in the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha; and, like Don Quixote, a famous character who shares this same origin, Almodóvar “de La Mancha” faces his own “windmills” towards stardom as a filmmaker.
Directed by Catherine Ulmer Lopez, the film is constructed through interviews given by Almodóvar himself throughout his career, archive photos and videos and scenes from his films that dialogue with the events narrated – “Pain and Glory” (2019), for example, he talks to images of his homeland and home videos recorded in the privacy of his family, in which he appears in the company of his mother.
The imagery resources gain completeness through exclusive testimonies from inhabitants of Calzada de Calatrava and cinema professionals who followed the filmmaker’s trajectory closely.
Among the film’s curious passages are images from the time when Almodóvar was a rock singer, when he sang in drag – in a Spain that had just left the Franco dictatorship, in the 1970s, where homosexuality was still punished by imprisonment and electric shocks.
The filmmaker participates in the so-called Movida Madrileña, a counterculture movement that grew stronger with the freedom brought by the new times of democracy, and in this context he released his first film: “Pepi, Luci, Bom e Outra Garotas de Montão” (1980).
From then on, Almodóvar made a point of imposing himself as a representative of the new against the backwardness of Franco’s times, and was recognized as “provocative”.
“He showed from the beginning […] who wasn’t afraid of anything. He also embodied in himself, through his personality and his way of being, change and then rupture”, analyzes Frédéric Strauss, film critic and author of the book “Conversas com Almodóvar”.
In just a few years, he became known worldwide for films such as “What Did I Do to Deserve This?” (1984), “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988) and “Ata-me!” (1990) – just the beginning of a very productive trajectory that would come in the following decades.
The documentary then focuses on an analysis of the details that are like a signature of Almodóvar’s cinematography, especially his fascination with colors and tones, always chosen with a meticulous eye, in addition to the consistent partnership with certain actors and actresses such as Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas.
The documentary also explores Almodóvar’s more socially conscious side and shows how his films explore issues such as sexual freedom – much defended by him, who is admittedly homosexual. He also shows, in his more mature phase, a genuine concern for political issues, such as the still lingering consequences of the Spanish Civil War, which served as the backdrop for his most recent feature, “Parallel Mothers” (2022).
“Pedro Almodóvar: The Rebel of La Mancha” is a production by 13 Prods. To watch the film on CurtaOn – Clube de Documentários, simply access the platform on Prime Video Channels – from Amazon -, on Claro TV+ or on the official website (CurtaOnPodercomifiquebr).