a. There are often stage plays in Almodovar’s films, as if such a setting is used to carry out the intertextuality between reality-movie and movie-movie play. Tell you a story, don't take it seriously." The opening curtain is opened, and the good show is staged; at the end, the red smoke comes on the stage from the backstage, the curtain is opened, and the good show is over.
b. This strong sense of alienation is also reflected in the blunt division of time and space with subtitles. Almodovar never pays attention to the coherence of time and space. For the theme he wants to express, a relatively consistent time and space will block the possibility of his narrative and the intensity of dramatic conflict. This treatment is the most obvious manifestation of manipulating text. For this reason, he always cut the time and space into pieces.
c. The last point is reflected in the extremely exaggerated drama: his stories are always full of coincidences (this kind of coincidence drama may lead him to directly film "Wild Tales", I think it is the extreme presentation of his personal narrative style): Son She was killed by Hongyan, and she just became the secretary of Hongyan; the hostess returned to Barcelona and just picked up A Yue on the street; met a nun who happened to be enlarged by her ex-husband.
No coincidence is a book, but Almodovar likes to put such multiple coincidences in an hour-long movie, which is dangerous. Don't you see that as long as there are two such coincidences in a domestic movie in one movie, the audience is likely to label it as a "dog-blood" movie because it resists constructiveness. Low scores are also inevitable. But Almodóvar succeeded, I think, because the subject he explored was very deep. It can even be said that the predicaments faced by transgender people and women, and even the idea of reorganizing families and marriages, were far ahead of their time. From this point of view, this advanced value (not distinguishing between high and low, but ahead of the times) is the biggest treasure of this movie. The simplicity of the technique—coincidence, accident, is just a spice for an efficient illustration of the subject. This film actually has a very special interpretation on exploring new relationships.
While viewers who follow the story might be offended by texts like: same-sex, transgender, single mom, AIDS, prostitutes. Just pick two labels from such a thing, and you can make a bitter and obscure Beiying student homework. Almodóvar's text is destined to be unconvincing, bloody. I guess he knows it himself, but he never polishes on authenticity, but insists on showing his thoughts on intimacy and the living conditions of women brought about by coincidence. This is what he wants to focus on and discuss. If Fellini juggles in the movies, Almodovar is juggling the movies themselves. It doesn't matter whether the text is solid or not, it doesn't matter whether it can be convinced by the audience. "Come on, I'll tell you a bloody story." If anyone dares to make a movie with such subtext, he must die miserably. But Almodovar was just as brave as he said: "Come on, I'll tell you a bloody story, but don't cry when I'm done."
I believe that in a few years, maybe 20 years later, with the progress of human society and the diversification of intimate relationships, this film will definitely be re-understood and placed in a higher position. It seems interesting that everyone is discussing the era of Almodovar.
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