All About My Mujeres

My love affair with Pedro Almodóvar began many years ago when I first saw his nuns-on-LSD in one of my favorites of his early films, 1984's Dark Habits. The women in this film blew my mind with their insanity. And ever since, Pedro and his women have never let me down. He has consistently led the female characters in his films to emotional ledges and heights that no other directors have ever come close to. Whether they are portraying nuns, mothers, sisters, whores, lovers or even transitioned women that used to be men, Almodóvar's ladies and the high-wire emotion he gets them to bring to the screen have always been at the core of what makes his movies so beyond-dramatic. Over the years he has collected an amazing, diverse group of actresses of all shapes and sizes, often recurring, who bring these roles to life. These women have also become members of Almodóvar's big, crazy, extended family. On the occasion of his new movie, The Skin I Live In, I Skyped with him for some girl talk.

Kim Hastreiter: Pedro, your new film is such a crazy magnificent movie. It's epic! The women in your films are always so intense and extreme. Words that come to my mind are "hysterical, desperate, dramatic, unhinged, fiercely passionate, hyper-emotional, brazen, extreme."

Pedro Almodóvar: I identify fully with all those qualities. It comes from my own personal biography. It has a lot to do with the women who surrounded me in my childhood. When I was very young, I lived in a little village in La Mancha, which was a terribly chauvinistic place. Although they were "supposed" to be submissive to the men around them, the women there had all those qualities you just described. they were able, through their own ingenuity, to push forward and pull out of terrible poverty and the dictatorship in the '40s and '50s. They were fighters and were practical, tenacious and completely free of prejudices. I think
my female characters are a mix of these women from my childhood as well as those female characters I lived with when I came to Madrid as a teenager.

KH: What was your mother like?

PA: My mother, a Catholic like everyone in the country, was a great fighter and had a tremendous ability to survive. When I was eight we moved from La Mancha to another province in western Spain. The area we lived in was rather poor -- people had nothing. They lived in the countryside, worked in the fields and many were illiterate. My mother came up with the idea to teach the locals to read and write -- although she actually asked me to teach them! So at eight years old, I taught all of the young, beautiful boys at night, after they had been working in the fields. I taught them how to read and write, and even mathematics.

She also came up with a business idea: reading and writing letters for them. My mother would actually dictate the letters to me because I had better handwriting. And she charged for all this! What I eventually discovered was that when my mother read their letters to them, she'd often invent things that were not actually in there. I'd say, "but mom -- why do you tell them so many things that are not in the letters?" It was always something very nice -- she'd say to
one woman, for example, "your grandmother has been thinking so much about you," while actually in the letter no one was thinking about her. She'd tell me, "Oh Pedro, you saw how happy they were when I read those letters to them." She knew the things they wanted to hear. This was the big lesson I learned from my mother: the importance of fiction in real life. Reality just isn't good enough. We have to improve on reality through fiction.

KH: You're a very passionate man, but I don't think of you as hysterical or unhinged -- like so many of your female leads.

PA: I don't think of myself that way, although I can actually get quite upset and furious about things. When I put the hysteria into my female characters in the films, I see it as liberating for them --  a therapeutic release. My film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was all about women who are hysterical. There is a moment of complete madness a woman feels when she is left by a man. Both men and women can go out of their minds, but when women do it, they're much more spectacular, demonstrative and more active in their desperation and hysteria than men are.

KH: You've addressed men becoming women in many of your films. What is it that draws you to men transitioning into women?

PA: I first saw a transvestite when I was 17 and was fascinated. Visually, I find them quite spectacular -- much as I do when I see a beautiful girl with very individual style walking down the street. I also love the challenge of transgression there -- a man who's going against all the customs of his gender. This is so interesting to me. In my film All About My Mother, the transvestite character says that women are much more authentic when they look like the picture they have in their mind when they dream about themselves. I think a transvestite has a dream of what he would look like as a woman, and then tries to make that real.

KH: Do you think Spain is more open to transgender people than other countries?

PA: Yes. transsexuals are much more accepted today, which is a big change in Spain from the late-'70s. In the past they had to go to Casablanca or Paris to have their operations. They couldn't do it in Spain. And after, they were doomed to become prostitutes, or perform in the worst sort of musical revue shows. First the law changed -- we now have legal "reassignment of gender," which was very important, and then our society changed, too. People here now realize that nature can make mistakes -- but that it can be rectified. Parents now understand transsexuality is not just about a whim, but that it's about your essence and your identity. That if your son or your daughter was born in the wrong body it can be corrected. In Spain, families now support their children when they want to have the operation. Things changed a lot for the better.

KH: That's fantastic. Why do you think some gay men have such a beautiful understanding of the way women think?

PA: I've always wondered why heterosexual men have such a hard time understanding women! I'm not an expert, but perhaps the reason is that homosexual men treat women as equals because they don't fear failing women the way heterosexual men do. Just the fact there is no sexual relationship between the homosexual man and the woman makes it so much easier.

KH: In your films you've often portrayed heterosexual men as controlling, obsessed, sometimes violent, intolerant. Do you think of straight men this way?

PA: Homosexual men can act the same way as heterosexual men. The only reason they are being portrayed like that is because of the stories I am telling. I am not generalizing that all heterosexual men are like that -- because they aren't. These are often exaggerations even if they are my reflections of reality. Stories of happy couples -- women and men that get along together -- are boring!

KH: Many of the women who've appeared throughout the years in your films have grown up with you. They are family. Some started as young love interests and are now playing grandmothers.

PA: Yes, my film family is an artistic family with emotional bonds. It's very moving for me to see Marisa Paredes in The Skin I Live In. She plays an elderly mother, but 25 years ago she was so young and beautiful in Dark Habits. It's like when a family gets together to look at old family photos, that's how I feel when I see my actresses -- how they've aged with me, alongside me, in my films. I see how time has passed with them, and passed for myself as well. It's quite moving. I like it. ★



TALK TO HER.... ABOUT PEDRO


Rossy de Palma
Pedro debut: Law of Desire (1987).
<< Pictured in Kika: (1993)
"Pedro always said that men are so boring because they don't know how to explain their feelings and frustrations. But women, even when they are sad or desperate, they find a way to survive and make the most out of life. We smile and try to be happy even in the middle of a nightmare. When I first met Pedro, he was already well-known, and I didn't want to bother him, then I tried to seduce him discreetly. My first impression was of somebody very funny, curious and smart, but also someone very familiar."