An interview with the Spanish director done in 1999 before the release of All About My Mother
Almodovar has always worn his soap opera sleeve well and in the nineties his films have leaned toward heavier soap opera dramas. Now with All About My Mother Almodovar makes a bold move into a more refined higher quality of drama. The flourishes are still there but they no longer dominate the story. Instead they enrich and enliven the film making it both funny and serious. In this - his 13th film - Almodovar deals with the nature of familial relationships among friends. The central theme deal with the kindness of strangers.
Question: There has been a change in the government in Spain a couple years ago. Do you feel your films have become more political due to the change?
Almodovar: It didn’t affect me. I don’t like this government [but] it doesn’t affect my movies. The nightlife in Madrid now is less wonderful and less flamboyant than before...although nothing compared to this [in Los Angeles]. Here it doesn’t exist. Madrid was one of the towns that had the most incredible nightlife. But now with this right wing government they make it more difficult.
Even though the government is Right Wing the Spanish people don’t allow the opportunity [for the government] to behave like a real Right Wing. Anyway, they don’t have the majority. They have to share the power with the other parties. Talking about how political are my movies I think all of them are very political. Even at the beginning with the more crazy comedies. I was giving an idea of the world that I liked and it was not exactly the official way of living. Even the less political movies like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown there is a message of freedom. All the characters that I write [about] live an autonomous life with a lack of prejudice and this is a position made clear of politics.
Q: I read that years ago you worked on an underground comic book. Some of your movies are loud and outrageous like comic books. Were you influenced by the work you did in comic books?
A: I don’t know. In any case I’m conscious of it perhaps. What I remember most from that experience is the way I dealt with the characters. I used more prototypes of the European nightlife. But I’m not too familiar with comic books now.
Q: I meant like Dick Tracy comics. You use a lot of primary colors in your movies.
A: Ah Yes, I like Dick Tracy comics. I like that period. For me the colors are very important. It is one of the more important elements. Like with music. Everything is one element of narration. I make the decorations myself. I do it like a painter using a palette and with all the things that the characters have like objects. I rehearse by painting the walls and after I paint them again I put the actors there and then think about the clothes and try to build everything together and bring all the colors together.
Q: When you’re writing the script do you see the colors?
A: No. This is all just in pre-production. When I’m reading and writing I don’t visualize the faces of the actors. Sometimes I start with a face and sometime I start even with the sex [gender] and it can change or the age can change. I don’t trust myself because I can start with something and at the end I change it completely.
Q: So you don’t write with specific actors in mind?
A: No, it’s casual for instance I’ve made six movie with Antonio Banderas another six with Carmen Maura another four with Marisa Paredes. It’s casual. After finishing a script of course I think about the faces that are more familiar to me. [There are] two exceptions. I wrote Women on The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown for Carmen and I wrote Tie Me Up Tie Me Down for Antonio. That was the only time they were on my mind while I was writing. But the rest I just called them again because I thought they would be good. When I’m writing I start making the cast. At the same moment I start visualizing everything. So I make a choice of the palette of the colors and I make a choice and I give them to the rest of the people so they will know that "We are going to move between these type of colors." And then I rehearse the script with the actors and I change a lot there too. I adapt the character to the real actor to the real person. Sometimes I put in many things that belong to the person. I adapt it because it is the only way. The ideal cast does not exist on paper. It is an abstraction.
Q: Fellini did something similar with actors and voices.
A: What I do is I make the choice as close as possible [to the script] and then I adapt it to the person. And with this link the result is one character that is similar to what I thought. And what’s good is the actors I choose are the best in the world to do [the role] because I make it fit them like a tailor... like a shirt.
Q: The film got a great response in Cannes and now it’s getting great press in New York how do you feel?
A: I’m in the clouds. I have no reason to complain. I’ve never experienced this before because usually people love or hate my movies. I was always controversial. I’m not used to positive reviews [from this many] people. In Cannes and New York... the response has been the same everywhere. I suppose that’s good. But it makes me feel frightened about the future.
Q: Can you talk about the evolution of your style? It was very flamboyant, colorful and controversial in the eighties and now it has segued into more melodramatic territory.
A: I was not changing while thinking about the audience because the audience doesn’t have a say while you’re working. I was changing depending on my own development because you know...time is passing and I’m getting older. Or perhaps because [of] my experience I know more about the language and I know more about people. And perhaps I’m maturing and I know better the world that I’m living. In the eighties I was very representative. Everything was so concrete. I went so far in that eighties sensibility [that] I became too eighties so that in the nineties I was satirized by that. Also I’ve wanted to tell this type of story. My life [has] changed a little and I’m much more interested in things that happen in [people’s] interiors. This movie is a result of the other twelve movies. If not for those [movies] I couldn’t have done this one. I’m conscious that I was changing, that I became stronger. In terms of colors all my movies will be colorful because I adhere to this pool of colors and apply them to the development of my characters. You can give a role to many senses not only with primary colors. The Flower of My Secret, Live Flesh and this one compose a sort of unconscious trilogy. You can recognize that these movies belong to my nineties [movies] and they are different from the eighties. But you can recognize me in both of them because essentially [a person] doesn’t change. I am more concerned with emotions and the problems I talk about in my latest movie. But this doesn’t mean I’m only going to make dramas now. I would like to make a comedy again. And in fact I have one idea I hope to develop.
Continued Page Two: All about the Transvestite character.
