Women in the films of Pedro Almodóvar’s
Alessandro Macchi
Pedro Almodóvar is a Spanish film director who became famous through his unique style in cinematography. He first started his film-making career after the death of General Franco in 1975, in the midst of the cultural surge now known as ‘La Movida Madrileña’. In the beginning his films were short, sexual silent movies (he was too poor to afford tapes able to hold soundtracks) and were merely displayed at Madrid nightclubs. These movies were focused on undoing the many themes that had been censured under Franco, and as Almodóvar himself put it, ‘I sort of forgot about my political leanings and dedicated myself to finally enjoying the things denied me.’ 1 As time went on, and his production quality improved, these themes evolved into more subtle underlying issues that were prevalent in everyday modern life in Spain, focusing especially on the hardships and discrimination women went through. I will focus on the way that women are portrayed in his movies, including the problems they are forced to face and the way they are shown to deal with them. Almodóvar presents many of the women in his movies with traditional female characteristics and values, exemplified through their jobs and roles. However, he also contrasts this idea by presenting many women, including those already mentioned, as taking on more stereotypically male roles, breaking down the social norms in Spain, and portraying the women as strong, independent and resilient. The other theme Almodóvar often displays are the incredible hardships in many of the women’s’ lives, often undetectable by an outsider or even a close friend, leaving the women to have to deal with them alone. The first way in which Pedro Almodóvar portrays women is in a traditionally feminine way. That is to say, many female characters act as they would have under Franco’s regime, with stereotypically ‘female’ roles such as mother, maid, housewife and cook, and often seem to rely on male company and validation, whilst simultaneously showing much more of an empathic and a loving nature than the male characters. A clear example of this is presented in Volver (2006), which depicts the struggles of a single mother (Raimunda), looking after her daughter after her husband was killed (by her daughter). In this movie, Almodóvar presents the theme of motherhood as complicated, as Raimunda also has a complicated relationship with her own mother who she mistakenly thought had died. However, an underlying theme of the loving nature of women resides throughout the movie, harshly contrasting with the nature of men, who are portrayed as only focused on sexual drive. The idea of women being desperate for male (or female) company is also a recurring theme in various of Almodóvar’s movies, for example in Todo sobre mi madre (1999). In this dramatic comedy, the main character (Manuela) witnesses the death of her teenage son, and therefore decides to fulfil his last wish of learning about his father (a transgender woman called Lola). Throughout the course of the movie, we learn about the stories of various women, and the extreme struggles of living alone. In fact, Manuela s tates that ‘Apart from the tits, the husband hadn’t changed that much; so, she ended up accepting him. Women will do anything to avoid being alone’, exemplifying Almodóvar’s idea that often women would feel forced to stay with abusive husbands rather than face life alone.
1 The Standard 2023.
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