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MARK ALUNSON. A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar. London/New York: I.E. Tauris Publishers, 2001. 258 pp. ISBN 1-86064-507-0.
Spain is Still Different: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar
In the introduction to the latest book in English on Pedro Almodóvar's filmmaking, British film critic Mark Allinson sets out to "provide an introductory guide for anyone interested in Almodovar's cinema, whether it be film specialists who want to read about the cultural context of the films, Hispanists who want to read about the films as cinematic texts, or the general film-goer eager simply to read more about Almodovar" (IX). Allinson himself is surely all of the above, for his text reads as a passionately informed endorsement of Almodovarian cultural politics and aesthetic proposals. It is the combination of the filmic textual analysis, an understanding of the complexities surrounding the production of films in general, and the special circumstances surrounding postFranco Spain in particular, that make A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodovar a book well suited for students of film and/or of Spanish culture as articulated under the Almodovarian aesthetic lens.
Allinson's interest in Almodovar stems from the emphasis placed on "culture" as a safer and, therefore, commodifiable substitution for radical political change during Spain's transition to democracy period. Almodovar's apparent disavowal of Francoism leads Allinson to rightfully pinpoint the filmmaker's commercial success on both his complicity with the "desmemoria" paradigm that dominated a mainstream Spanish society tired of "being different" in terms of cultural and political backwardness, and on the filmmaker's portrayal of a "colourful, festive image of Spain which appealed to foreign audiences" (4). Hence, while Almodovar's success at home is due to the ways he denaturalizes the strongholds of Spanish culture, Allinson correctly argues that for audiences abroad the opposite is also true. The international reception of his films has paradoxically transformed Almodóvar's idiosyncratic depictions of contemporary Spain into a new kind of national narrative for "his films are now the most accessible (and most accessed) depiction of contemporary Spain for most of the world" (5). The consequences of this ontological slippage (making the Almodovarian aesthetic universe a literal depiction of Spanish social and cultural realities) together with the political implications of this shortsightedness (the antifeminist, politically incorrect accusations leveled against...