“Who could get away with having a nun get pregnant by a transvestite … who’s gay and has AIDS?” ask film editor José Salcedo in “Deconstructing Almodóvar,” one of three featurettes on the bonus disc of the timely, impressive box set “Viva Pedro: The Almodóvar Collection” ($117.95)
Who indeed?
Over the past 20 years, the Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodóvar has only grown better at tempering his wildest impulses and characters with his compassionate grasp of what many consider transgressive. (Three of the movies in the set are rated NC-17).
Almodóvar’s remarkable arc is well-represented with this fine collection of films spanning 1986-2004: “Matador,” “Law of Desire,” “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” “The Flower of My Secret,” “Live Flesh,” “All About My Mother,” “Talk to Her” and “Bad Education.”
This collection bears witness not only to the director’s vibrant affection for the human condition but to his love of the machinery and magic of filmmaking. His movies don’t merely tell stories, they celebrate cinema by quoting from films (“All About Eve” in “All About My Mother,” for instance) or by showing the process of moviemaking (a brilliant dubbing scene in “Law of Desire”).
Almodóvar extends that same vivid curiosity and spectacular craft to the comparably complex issue of bodies and transcendence, with desire as the bridge. In fact, El Deseo – “desire”- is the name of Almodóvar and brother Augustin’s film company, launched in 1987.
The list of characters who sojourn, struggle and sometimes triumph in Almodóvar’s films includes, but is not limited to, transvestites, killers, pedophiles, women on the verge, women in comas and matadors in training.
Penelope Cruz played the aforementioned nun in 1999’s Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language film, “All About My Mother.” The Madrid native also has a pivotal role in “Live Flesh,” as a prostitute who gives birth to the complicated hero Victor on a city bus.
Last week, Cruz was nominated for the best-actress Oscar for her role in Almodóvar’s latest, “Volver” (the first Spanish actress to receive that honor).
“I love the way he doesn’t judge his characters,” she says in an onscreen commentary.
Cruz isn’t the only performer to work a number of times with Almodóvar. A baby- faced Antonio Banderas appeared in “Matador,” “Law of Desire” (both on DVD for the first time) and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”
In “Matador,” he plays Angel, a repressed young man living in the house of his religiously strident mom. To prove his manhood, he assaults a woman. She doesn’t take the attempt particularly seriously.
Yet he goes to the police to confess to the “rape” and then cops to a series of murders. Angel’s female lawyer knows he’s innocent of the killings because, well, she might be guilty. Teacher Diego, a bullfighting legend, could be responsible for others.
This is just one example of the ways in which an Almodóvar film unfolds like circus act. Yet as unlikely, even comical, as they are, they always uncover tender realities.
Plunging into these films again, it’s clear one reason Almodóvar’s films succeed so deliriously is his gift with actors.
“Out of all the directors I’ve worked with, he’s the one who likes actors the most,” says Duenas, who plays Cruz’s sister in “Volver.”
“I’ve never met anyone who’s liked them as much.”
