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He made his name with a succession of daring, challenging and internationally acclaimed movies but with Broken Embraces, has Pedro Almodovar mellowed?
Although he grew up under the strictures of Franco's Spain the cinema of Pedro Almodovar is characterised by tangled relationships and risqué romances, making the openly gay director seem the antithesis of the repressive regime in which he came of age.
His films have garnered wide acclaim far beyond Spain's borders, the likes of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, High Heels, Talk To Her, Bad Education and Volver winning him new fans, and fresh awards, around the world.
Broken Embraces has been similarly lauded, but at the same time seems so much more conventional - or at least less controversial - and in its multi-layered plotline of a doomed love affair with its references to movie history is something of a love letter to cinema.
"I became aware of this when I finished making the film," explains Almodovar, who speaks good English but prefers to filter his thoughts through a translator here. "Essentially what I wanted to talk about in this film was the love story, the relationships between the four characters, in some cases their fatal love affairs, and it just so happens that these four characters are actually involved in making a film.
“So in a very natural way the film provided a backdrop for the story and I realised that when I put my camera in front of an editing table, in front of the lights, in a very natural way I was paying tribute to filmmaking and to all these elements that have been an essential part of my life for many years, without which I wouldn’t understand my life as it is.
"There's also a thought process going on about the role of images in contemporary life. And another consideration is that moving images, which defined cinema, are no longer strictly limited to the realm of cinema. We're surrounded by them all the time in advertising, we can see them on our phones, so moving images are very part of our everyday lives and sometimes not in a positive way at all."
It's interesting that the omnipresence of cameras in the modern world is a theme Almodovar wanted to explore, as his good friend and leading lady Penelope Cruz, has had her fair share of paparazzi lenses trained in her direction.
They have worked together on four movies now, but in that time Cruz has also developed a Hollywood presence and won an Oscar. So Almodovar is in a good position to see whether his muse has changed under the weight of these developments in her career.
"I think when she comes back to Europe - and certainly when she shoots with me - she is very much the same actress as when we made our first film together 12 years ago. Her life has certainly changed enormously, she's been extremely successful and everything that surrounds the way she lives, the way she moves around the world, has of course changed considerably.
"But I don't think that has changed her approach to her roles or the way she works in any way. She certainly works with me in exactly the same way she always has. And fortunately she continues to place blind faith in me so I'm very fortunate she hasn’t changed in that sense.
"She believes in me much more than I do myself. That gives you a lot of strength, knowing that you have an actress who will do absolutely anything you ask her to do without even blinking gives you a lot of strength."
There is a playfulness to Almodovar that anyone who has enjoyed his films will recognise in the man himself. But he insists that he never set out to be scandalous or shocking for the sake of it.
"Scandal is in the eye of the beholder," he smiles. "I never set out to be scandalous or shocking, I just wanted to tell stories from my point of view and my mentality. But I admit that sometimes that perspective could have been shocking.
"When they were outrageous I accepted that but I didn't try to get a reaction. I've been making movies for 30 years and probably the way I feel now is less shocking, perhaps. That's only natural. I never set out to be shocking - that's what Lars Von Trier does, that's what Madonna does, but that was never my intention.
"What is important for me is if I connect with my movies, either people are moved or they are entertained and they like it, not to be outrageous. It's very difficult to be outrageous in movies now.
"We're living in times of huge scandal coming from other walks of life - from politics, from the financial world - I don't think cinema really generates scandal in that way today."
Which takes us back to the very beginnings of his career, first picking up a film camera in 1971, playing in a proto-punk band and being present in Madrid at the first full flowering of freedom in the post-Franco Spain.
"I started making movies at that specific point in time when Spain reached its democracy," he smiles, "and I'm a direct heir of that. There was a huge explosion that spilled over into all forms of human, artistic and cinematic expression, and of course it spilled over into my films as well, because there was this huge exhilarating expression of freedom, of pleasures that had been denied before.
"So that tied in with the fact that I was a lot younger obviously affected my films. You can say that my films have run parallel to the evolution of life in Spain. It's no longer a new democracy, it's certainly a young democracy, but it is firmly established."
ANWAR BRETT
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