Some of us are lucky in life

Trying to buy a bit more time until blog-God throws me out and cancels my blog because I am not posting anything, I thought I would show you this. Enjoy :-)



I will post something (clever/nice/profound/funny/all of the above) soon.
I promise.

Hilarious...

The importance of being absurd

Almodovar, perhaps more than any other modern director, demands the ultimate suspension of disbelief from his audience. In order to get into his world, you must leave pretence, and expectation of any standard movie story-line aside. What you get in return is often magnificent. Perhaps "the skin I live in" is not his best movie, but the absurdity of the plot, makes it one of the most Almodovar-like in years.

Immortal lines encapsulate the Almodovar universe of "I can't believe what I am seeing":
From "All about my mother"'s
- I don't want this woman holding my grandchild!
- This woman is his father!
to so many more absurd storylines...

If one is asked to describe the story of Almodovar's movies, people might think you're joking:
Lonely male nurse rapes his comatose patient and brings her back to life; mother goes back to her hometown to find the transvestite she had a son with to tell him that their child has died, only to find he has impregnated a nun who is dieing of AIDS; brilliant surgeon kidnaps his daughter almost rapist, gives him a sex change, a new skin, and the face of his dead wife and embarks of an affair with him/her... If it wasn't ridiculous it would be tragic. Or the other way round.

That's the fine line of Almodovar's films: they are so absurd that they can either be construed as ridiculous, farcical or ultimately tragic, like I-killed-my-father-and-married-my-mother kind of tragedy.

Talk to her was a true tragedy that you couldn't leave the cinema without floods of tears streaming from your face.
In the skin I live in, the tragedy is not so evident. Perhaps because it is so beautiful, it cannot be so tragic. Still it has its moments.

Perhaps for hardcore Almodovar fans, this is not enough.
But maybe the beauty will convince you...