All About the Director:

Considering Pedro Almódovar as an Auteur

By Ben Syme

The Theory
Auteur theory is a concept birthed by the New Wave artistic movement of the mid-20th
century, notably in cinema the writings of the film critic Alexandre Astruc. Astruc
formulated the concept of caméra-stylo, the beginnings of auteur theory and literally
translated as “camera as pen”. Caméra-stylo envisions his theory that “filmmakers should
use their equipment as spontaneously, flexibly and personally as a writer uses a pen” in
which the film is regarded as it’s own audio-visual language, through which the director
speaks to her audience as an author would her reader.
Auteur theory itself began to emerge in the 1950s French cinema scene as a revolt
against what many filmmakers and critics felt was the “lifeless” and perhaps formulaic
conventional cinema of the time dictated by Hollywood. As France so often has been at the
forefront of art in cinema, here auteur theory argued that the director should be as an artist
in the creation of their work and as a result should have complete creative responsibility
over their work. It was their belief that the auteur is “the single individual most responsible
for whatever personal expression (if any) a movie yielded up under critical analysis”, which
is the definition most widely accepted today.
Andrew Sarris states that for a director to be considered an auteur their films must
“exhibit certain recurring characteristics of style which serve as his signature…over a group
of his films”. Ideally, a viewer familiar enough with a directors work should be able to
recognise one of their films simply by watching it, as is often the case with many great or
prolific directors.

The Director
Throughout this essay, I will analyse exactly what makes Pedro Almódovar an auteur and to
what extent we can identify his “characteristics of style which serve as his signature”. Pedro
Almódovar is one of Spain’s most prominent directors, and not to mention being the film
maker arguably responsible for driving Spain’s presence on the international film circuit
into the spotlight after the creative sinkhole that was Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.
Almodovar started making films in the late 1970s where it is quite easy to paint a
romantic image of the young filmmaker struggling to make enough money to buy camera
equipment. In the earliest days of his career he was entirely self-produced and made movies
that dealt candidly with themes that were hard for many to face. His films became cult hits
and played on the underground circuits of makeshift cinemas in bars and clubs. This gritty,
cultish, deeply personal and boundary pushing style has never left him and is his signature
as one of the great contemporary auteurs.
So what exactly makes an Almódovar film undeniably an Almódovar film? There are
many themes and stylistic trademarks evident across Almódovars’ films and doubtless many
would consider his work incredibly stylistic and identifiable. Here I will address just a few
of the themes and directorial signatures evident in his films, with particular emphasis on the
analysis of three of his films: 1999’s All About My Mother, 2002’s Talk to Her, and 2011’s
The Skin I Live In.

Humanism
Almódovar centres his films on people and their relationships with other people. There tend
to be a lot of characters, with many arcs and a web of interpersonal relationships. One could
argue as a result that Almódovar’s films are very much relationship and character driven,
with more agency placed on human beings, their underlying emotions and sometimes subtle
desires that drive them than more tangible or typical motivations.
This is stylistically evident in the three aforementioned films. All of them offer up a
rich gender and age realistic cast of characters, bringing his stories closer to the realm of
reality.
The screen grab to the right is the opening scene of All About My Mother, a shot that
immediately places us in the middle of the
relationship between a mother and her child. The shot
demonstrates the balance and completeness of the
two in their world through the balance between both
in the frame and the balance between the strong
primary colours red and blue.
Motherhood, and perhaps furthermore
motherhood as part of womanhood, is the
overarching theme of this film as many of the female or trans-female characters adopt a
maternal role in some form or other. Not least Manuela, the main character and titular
mother, who begins the film both as a literal mother and a nurse, and takes care of people
throughout the film. Huma takes care of Nina- although she has told Nina she cannot be her
mother, she holds her at the hospital as a mother would her child, showing she has taken on
a motherly role to Nina whether she likes it or not. Agrado takes care of Huma. Rosa, a nun,
adopts Manuela as her mother, while her biological mother takes care of her senile father.
Furthermore, colour clearly plays an important role in the film, notably the colours
red and blue. However, exactly how they are used and what they represent is open to
different interpretations. It could be argued that the colours simply serve the sense of
balance that the film’s protagonist strives for and is something that plays into the
overarching themes of gender dichotomy. We are first introduced to this use of red and blue
in Manuela and Esteban’s aforementioned opening scene, where the son and mother are
dressed in the red and blue respectively. Another example of this use of red and blue can be
seen in the theatre scenes, where the entire stage is bathed in a blue light while Manuela
wears red and sits on a red chair. Both of these scenes use red and blue to connote a balance
both on screen and between the characters.
It can be argued that Talk to Her is a film about couples, and by extension also driven
by the concept of relationships and desires. The
couple motif throughout the film is punctuated by the
titles “Benigno and Alicia”, “Marco and Lydia” and
“Marco and Alicia” at different points throughout the
film. However, the focus of the film is arguably on
the relationship between the two men, Benigno and
Marco, who form an unlikely and intimate friendship.
This suggestion is enforced by the establishing shot
of the two characters the first time we meet them; Marco he is sitting next to Benigno in the
theatre, framed as though they are a couple with possible romantic attachments even.
The couple dichotomy is punctuated by the framing of characters throughout the film
as couples. This particular motif is played on when we are introduced to Benigno and his
relationship with Alicia, as the scene in which the title screen of both of their names occurs
portrays him alone, drawing emphasis to the fact that he feels discontented and isolated in
his dysfunctional relationship.
The theme of communication (or rather the difficulty of it) is made explicit in the
title and is discussed throughout, perhaps most evidently in both Benigno and Marco’s
relationship with their comatose companions. Benigno is certain that Alicia is present and
simply unable to respond and so talks to her incessantly. Marco, in contrast, feels that Lydia
is not present and feels so little connection with her in her comatose state that he is unable to
bring himself to speak to her. In these scenes the fact that the women are in comas can be
seen as both a real and symbolic barrier to communication. The difficulty in communication
is also reflected in Marco and Benigno’s relationship as when he is in prison they can only
communicate by phone or through glass. This creates a strong sense of distance between the
characters and isolates Benigno as he is never framed with Marco in the same shot again.

The Taboo
Perhaps what put Almodovar on the map, at least in his early career, was his desire to turn
his camera on subjects that are often shunned by society. Without touching lightly he throws
his viewers into the heart of the aids ridden prostitute
scene of 90s Madrid in All About My Mother as well as
the transgender scene that went along with it. In Talk
to Her Almódovar’s protagonist is a stalker who
ultimately rapes his victim. Similarly The Skin I Live
In deals with rape, transgenderism and mental illness.
As a subsection the themes of these films show that, if
anything, Almodovar is unabashed about giving a
human face to the underbelly of society.
Take Talk to Her, for instance. The only real relationship in Benigno’s life is
arguably his friendship with Marco. Punctuated by the fact that they are often framed as a
couple and indeed Marco makes clear that he is unafraid of people thinking that they are
lovers. Benigno not only feigns homosexuality in order to divert suspicion from Alicia’s
father regarding his intentions, but also arguably presents himself as more feminine than
masculine throughout the film, something that can be seen in the regular scenes of him
painting Alicia’s nails. This can all be seen as reflecting the themes of sexuality, sexual
identity, homosexuality, feigned sexuality and ‘acting’ often present in Almódovar’s films.
Such themes, when placed into the social and political context of the film’s production,
were still considered by many to be a social taboo.
The theme of individual sovereignty and the violation of that sovereignty repeats
throughout the film. This can first be seen in the role of Lydia as a matador, something that
demands supreme control over a violent and unpredictable force, something that soon
overcomes her and puts her in the coma and her resulting complete loss of individual
sovereignty. This theme is also present in the theme of voyeurism, as Benigno watches
Alicia through his window and learns about her and her life without her knowledge. Alicia’s
complete loss of sovereignty and violation happens when Benigno rapes her while she is
comatose. Finally we see this theme play out when Benigno is imprisoned and his following
suicide, a controversial scene which strikes a contrast between his physical loss of
sovereignty and his final attempt at regaining it through taking his own life.
The idea of a character being trapped in a body that they cannot control seems to
reoccur across Almódovar’s work, and The Skin I Live In fails to be an exception from this.
Indeed the theme of personal violation is present again in this film, not least in the fact that
Vincente is kidnapped and forced to become a woman, completely violating both his
individual sovereignty and his identity, along with breaking a few mainstream cinematic
taboos.
When we are introduced to Zeca he is dressed as a tiger and as a result is almost the
physical manifestation of the theme of violation as a wild and violent creature. Zeca, as a
tiger, forces his way into Robert’s home and ultimately rapes Vincente/Vera, violating both
the security of the home and Vincente/Vera’s body.
The theme of violation can be extended to the violation of the audience’s sense of
comfort as Vincente/Vera is presented as Robert’s lover before we know that she used to be
a man and was forcibly made into a woman by Robert. This has the effect of completely
corrupting any previous understanding of their relationship.
Mistaken identity is a strong theme of this film as many characters are mistaken for
other people or simply not recognised. When we are first introduced to Zeca he is disguised
as a tiger and as a result not recognised by his mother Marilia. Later he finds Vincente/Vera
and believes him to be one of his old lovers who had died (Roberts’ ex-wife and in who’s
likeness Robert makes Vincente/Vera). As a result of Norma’s encounter with Vincente,
Norma believes she has been raped by Robert and no longer seems to recognise him, and
Robert mistakenly believes Vincente raped his daughter. Finally, Vincente/Vera has his
entire identity stolen and is not recognised by his mother when he finally returns to her at
the end.
Again Almódovar presents us with the theme of control, entrapment and
imprisonment. Vincente is not only physically trapped in Robert’s dungeon, and later his
home, but is subsequently trapped in the female body he creates for him. The scene of
Vincente in Robert’s dungeon is particularly humiliating as he is completely isolated in
darkness. It is here that he loses his individual sovereignty and perhaps also his status as a
human and a man in the eyes of Robert, as he is completely dehumanised.

Superimposed Titles
If the audio-visual is the language of the auteur, then superimposed titles are the auteur
shouting in our faces. Almódovar regularly jumps through time and gives the audience his
very stylistic titles to signify that he has done so.
Moreover, these superimposed titles in are utilised in
Talk to Her to punctuate some of the various
relationships that do or do not exist in the film and, in
respect to Marco, to add the dimension of his
relationships existing beyond the confines of the film.
In the closing scene we see the title “Marco and
Alicia” to show us that a new relationship between the
two is about to blossom. His titles do not instruct one what to think, but rather allows one to
imagine what will or has happened.

Time
The fact that Almódovar enjoys experimenting with time is something that is evident in the
aforementioned three films, although often to different effect. His films often take place
over many months or years, bringing audiences closer to the characters’ lives and in effect
making the films more “epic” in the poetic sense. It serves demonstrate a sense of history
with the characters and allows audiences to ‘fill in the gaps’ between time lapses, allowing
the viewer to engage and share in the creation of the story as the film progresses. In both
The Skin I Live In and Talk to Her, Almodovar uses time jumping to reveal separate pieces
of a story that must be pieced together independently. In this way he plays with the viewers’
understanding and allows new meaning to present itself. For example, in the former film,
Vincente/Vera is presented as Robert’s lover before it is revealed that she used to be a man
and was forcibly made into a woman through Robert’s illegal transgenic experiments, as
previously mentioned. Almódovar’s mastery of editing time goes hand in hand with his
mastery of film making and puts us as viewers entirely in his hands for an experience that
he has complete control over.
The screen grab on the right from Talk to Her
reads: “four years earlier” as the film begins to tell
the story from a new perspective, a cinematic
convention also used in The Skin I Live In alongside
countless other films. This juxtaposes with the way in
which All about My Mother uses forward time lapses
to propel the story, whilst concurrently using the
characters’ own personal timeline and biographies as
motivations for their movements.
The entire film can be seen as a sort of journey into the underworld. With the death
of her son Manuela is compelled to travel into her past, both physically through the train
ride to Barcelona and into the gritty underworld of the life she escaped replete with drugs,
AIDS and prostitution and fix everything she left. Her journey into the underworld and back
is punctuated by repetition of a shot of the train tunnel she travels through, before focusing
on the light on the other side. This is reminiscent of both the typical ‘light at the end of
tunnel’ death experience, as well as a birth canal into a new world. Additionally, the
repetition of the tunnel shot denotes the passage of time for dramatic effect, portraying the
way in which the character’s life continually goes through sudden and drastic change-
including as the result of the death of her son.

The theme of death and loss in the film is driven home in the two initial theatre
scenes in which the framing tells us that something has been clearly lost. In the second
scene the empty chair next to Manuela not only makes clear her isolation and loss but
presents her life as now being unbalanced as she struggles to find a part of who she is; not
only tying into the theme of drastic change over time, but relates back to Benigno’s
character arc in Talk To Her.

The Idealised Woman

Almódovar regularly presents both the celebration and the obsession with an idealised
female form. This is never made more explicit than in the framing of protagonists against
hyper-real images of women. In All about My Mother we see the protagonist Manuela
against the backdrop of a blown up poster of Huma as the female lead of the play within the
film. Here we are seeing Manuela through the eyes of her son, and so naturally comparisons
between her and this idealised image of a woman are inevitable. In this shot Manuela seems
like a reflection of the star behind her, and therefore connotes her son’s utter admiraltion
and pure love for her, to the extent where she is idealised as the respective star in her son’s
life even.
The film also features two transgender characters, both playing pivotal roles in the
film and whose transgenderism- and to an extent, the very meaning of being a woman and
how this influences their view of themselves- is a vital part of their character. It is not
immediately established that Agrado is a transwoman, but when this is revealed explicitly to
the audience it is depicted as being an integral part of her identity and something she seems
to conflictingly feel anger toward and take pride in simultaneously. Her transition from
dangerous streetwalking to working in a much safer environment follows her acceptance of
her identity as a transwoman, as she goes from cursing transwomen to standing on a stage
toward the end of the film and talking candidly and lovingly about who and what she is.
This transformation in her character and her standing is made clear by her screen presence
as when we first meet her she is literally rolling around on the floor in the dark, whereas
toward the end she is standing centre stage in the spotlight. Her character arc involved her
self-actualising what she wanted to be, and concluded with her accomplishing her perceived
notion of an ideal woman: strong and proud.
This provides a stark contrast to the portrayal of the second vital transwoman
character is Esteban’s father, Lola; a character built up throughout the film as a virtual
monster leaving a trail of destruction in her path described as “the worst parts of a woman
and the worst parts of a man”. When she is eventually introduced at the end of the film she
is in fact a grieving, elegant and loving transwoman. Her framing in her establishing shot,
windswept and sitting on the stairs, serves to present her as immediately harmless and
empathetic. This can be seen as both a transformation of perception of personality on behalf
of the audience as well as the physical transformation of our understanding of the
character’s gender identity, but also provides a reversal of theme of the seemingly
unattainable concept of the idealised woman: instead the audience is presented with the
unjustly demonised woman.
Talk to Her’s stalker turned rapist focal character Benigno goes to see a film within
the film, a black and white silent movie tentatively
titled The Shrinking Lover. Within this film within the
film the male lead perceptively shrinks to the size of a
thumb and his lover, the woman, becomes like a god to
him, to which he gives himself entirely, “he went inside
and stayed there forever”.
In Benigno there is an undeniable obsession with Alicia,
which has caused him to convince himself that he is in a
relationship with her and that they should get married
despite her being barely aware of his existence. The frequent depictions of him cleaning her
body in a very intimate way are something that develops a new and sinister meaning as the
nature of Benigno’s love for her is revealed, at best being borderline pathological.
In many ways, The Shrinking Lover is a rendering of Benigno’s “love”, essentially
being an allegory of a man who becomes completely powerless in the face of his lover, as
she becomes almost as a god to him, and he gives himself entirely to her pleasure. The wide
shot of the man sitting in front of an enlarged image of the woman serves to further
accentuate this point and lends the audience perspicacity of the mind of Benigno as slave to
his desires.
Akin to this image are those found in The Skin I
Live In, wherein the lead has a television monitor
displaying a feed from his prisoner’s room. He
enlarges the image and fixates on her form, once again
illustrating a man obsessed with an idealised, hyper-
real and over-sized image of a woman.
Robert embodies the theme of obsession with
the female body through his passion for Vincente’s
female form and the desire for its’ perfection. Robert’s
obsession is discernible in the fact that television monitors are placed throughout his house
including in his room, where he is repeatedly seen as being visually overcome with
Vincente’s body. Vincente/Vera is almost characterised as simply being another piece of
artwork in Robert’s house, due to being juxtaposed with the classical nude forms that adorn
the rest of his house.
His obsession can also be seen in his perfectionism as he embodies a master
craftsman in his creation of his ‘perfect female’. In the scene in which he places skin on the
mannequin there seem to be overt parallels to a tailor or an artist as opposed to the doctor
he’s meant to be.
In all three of these films the ‘idealised image of the woman’ is always overcome in
some way. In All about My Mother Huma enters the story a troubled woman and is
ultimately saved by Manuela; in Talk to Her Benigno is imprisoned and subsequently kills
himself, similarly in The Skin I Live In, Robert is killed by his ‘perfect woman’, who herself
escapes into the real world. If the auteur is attempting to communicate anything, it seems to
be a simultaneous expression of his reverence for women as well as a comment on the
destructive nature of the idealisation of women and the female form in media. On the
surface level this connotes the rejection of societal norms and unachievable standards of
beauty, but goes even deeper and promotes the acceptance of one’s own physical reality
rather than self-hate, self-destruction, and the de-humanisation of others based on a hollow
concept.
The Final Thought
Despite the relative controversy surrounding the concept of auteur theory, it is nonetheless
doubtless to state Almódovar has many signatures, and many more subtle, that all come
together to produce a ‘distinctly Almódovar’ cinematic experience. If essentially what it
means to be an auteur is to be able to express yourself fully through the work that you create
, and one acknowledges that although Almódovar obviously does not produce his films
single-handedly, then it can be said that few filmmakers leave their signature as evidently as
Almódovar, who consistently allows his spirit and his messages shine through his work.