KALTBLUT-HONK! 03 The Divas

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MR. ALVODOVAR AND HIS BIZARRE WORLD
lor. He was so affected for her dead that when the last
big diva alive died (forgive me Lauren Bacall) he wrote
an article at “El País”, the most important newspaper
in Spain, speaking about her influence in his life
and movies. Specially her traumatic marriages with
Richard Burton or her roles in “Butterfield 8” (Daniel
Mann, 1960) and in Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly,
Last Summer” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1959) and
specially “ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (Richard Brooks,
1958). In fact, Williams’ influence is more than obvious
in all of Almodóvar’s filmography, from desperate
but powerful women such as Carmen Maura in “¿Qué
he hecho yo para merecer esto!!” (1984) and “Women
on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988) or more
recently Penélope Cruz in “Volver” (2006) to insane
characters fighting solitude and desperately seeking to
be loved: Great theatre actress Julieta Serrano again
in “Women” or Spanish diva Marisa Paredes in “The
Flower of my Secret” (1995).
In “All about my mother” (1999), one of his best movies
where argentinian actress Cecilia Roth (she never
looked better) plays the role of a nurse who lost her son
in an accident after trying to get an autograph from his
favorite actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes) who is
playing Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”
in a theatre in Madrid. This movie got the Oscar
for best foreign language film in 2000.
But that’s not all. Almodóvar’s female universe is
pretty much bigger than Hollywood divas. It goes from
Italian neorealism where those voluptuous Italian
“mammas” like Silvana Mangano or Sophia Loren flow
to Mexican divas or artists such as María Felix, Frida
Kahlo or Chavela Vargas (Amodóvar’s close friend).
“Volver” is one of the best examples of this “Italian
trend” where Penélope Cruz gives the performance of
her life getting her first Academy Award nomination.
The movie is a small masterpiece where he honors all
those strong women he grew up with, mixing drama
with his peculiar sense of humor.
And now a whole paragraph to his best film (in my
opinion) of the last decade: “Talk to her” (2002),
probably the most touching and complete movie he
has ever done where just with the premise of two girls
(a classic dancer and a bullfighter) in deep comas he