Pedro Party: What Have I Done To Deserve This? & Volver

It's a Pedro Party. We're celebrating Almodóvar each day as we count down to Cannes 2017. Here's Daniel Crooke.

Women hold the universe together according to the peacock-feathered films of Pedro Almodóvar, and never more earthily or elegant than in his mirrored portraits of multitasking matriarchs putting out the fires of the men around them: 1984’s What Have I Done To Deserve This? and 2006’s Volver. Both domestic dramas with a hint of the supernatural, they showcase a pair of imperfect pragmatists – respectively, Gloria (Carmen Maura) and Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) – caught in the crucible of their everyday lives with no signs of slowing down, spinning an interminable amount of plates only to wash them straight after so they can serve their families dinner on time. While their inattentive lazybones husbands bark orders from the couch and fail to see the strength beyond their busts – no matter, as they’ll soon both be dead– Gloria and Raimunda are the breadwinners, juggling odd jobs and managing the affairs of family and friends to simply keep the lights on.

Strikingly feminist with an emphasis on the superhuman virtues of intergenerational sisterhood, What Have I Done To Deserve This? and Volver display two working women hustling on the verge with no time for a nervous breakdown...

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The Furniture: Decorating Obsession in "The Skin I Live In"

It's a Pedro Party! Our Almodóvar week is extending a couple of days. You can click on the images from this production design feature to see them in magnified detail. Here's Daniel Walber...

El Cigarral is a mysterious, hidden estate that lurks on the outskirts of Toledo, Spain. Its gates are perpetually locked and its secrets are not easily pried loose. Its owner, Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), keeps the outside world at a distance.

That said, more people manage to break in than he might like. It’s inevitable, at least in movies like these. Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In is part of a long tradition that winds its way from The Island of Lost Souls through Eyes Without a Face. And this house, which seems to be accessible only under cover of night or in disguise, is among the most dramatically conceived in the entire genre...

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Pedro Party: All About My Mother

It's a Pedro Party all week. Here's Lynn Lee on her introduction to Almodóvar...

To all actresses who have played actresses.  To all women who act.  To men who act and become women.  To all the people who want to be mothers.  To my mother.”

All About My Mother was the first Almodovar film I ever saw, and as it happens, I saw it with my own mother.  I don’t remember why I picked it for us to see together.  It certainly wasn’t because of the title or because I thought it would be something she’d particularly like.  In fact, if I’d thought about it more, I might have been anxious that she would find it too outré.  Or for that matter, that I would; as both a movie lover and a young adult, I was just beginning to learn what was out there and how far it stretched beyond my own personal experience.

To our credit, or rather to Almodovar’s, there was no reason for such trepidation...

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New to Netflix: "LOEV" is a many splendored thing

Please welcome new contributor Seán McGovern to TFE

LGBT titles on Netflix are tricky – how to see cute boys, feel all fuzzy and yet be artistic? Enter last year's critically acclaimed LOEV, which breezed its way onto Netflix everywhere last week. LOEV, Sudhanshu Saria's dreamy and offbeat romance from India was both a critical and audience favorite of the festival circuit in 2016. 

Western viewers may take for granted the quality and significance of some LGBT film out there, but having gay central characters in Indian cinema is still greatly taboo and faces serious challenges by the cencors – upbeat Bollywood films such as Kapoor & Sons take on an extra sense of daring when viewed by different sets of eyes (and yep, still make boffo box office).

Navigating romance was only part of it for Saria who I spoke with earlier today...

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The Furniture: The Salesman Crafts His Own Stage

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail. Here's Daniel Walber...

Asghar Farhadi's Oscar winning The Salesman begins with a set. The opening credits appear over the quiet stage of a small Tehran theater, nearly ready to debut a new production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. We see the bed before the actors who will lie in it, neon lights illuminated for an empty house. It is a quite literal setting of the stage before the drama begins.

It’s not a play adaptation, but it often feels like one. There are few locations and the cast is small. And, as in many play adaptations, the production design does a lot of heavy lifting...

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