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The Passion of Pedro Almodóvar: A Self-Portrait in Seven Films

The Passion of Pedro Almodóvar: A Self-Portrait in Seven Films

Hardcover

PhilosophyDirectorsFilm Studies

ISBN10: 0231220049
ISBN13: 9780231220040
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: Apr 29 2025
Pages: 216
Weight: 0.88
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.40 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

The films of Pedro Almodóvar teem with characters who at once are and are not alter egos of the director. In film after film, the Spanish auteur mines his past for alternative selves, telling and retelling formative stories from his own life, plumbing the depths of his memory while exploring other lives he might have led. What can Almodóvar's work tell us about the quest for self-knowledge--for understanding who we are and who we might yet become?

James Miller considers seven of Almodóvar's most personal films, arguing that together they offer a revealing self-portrait of the director and his search for meaning. Beginning with Volver, Miller traces Almodóvar's signature obsessions backward and forward through the director's filmography. Deeply shaped by the counterculture of the 1960s--which arrived belatedly in Franco's Spain--Almodóvar has long been fascinated by the exhilarating power and devastating limitations of artistic and sexual transgression. In rich readings, Miller shows how Almodóvar tests the blurry line between fiction and reality, the bounds of individual freedom, and the durability of a sense of self. In so doing, the director turns cinema into a form of philosophical investigation and self-exploration. A keenly observed, masterfully written portrait of one of world cinema's greatest creative forces, The Passion of Pedro Almodóvar finds in film new ways to tell the story of a life.

Also from

Miller, James

Also in

Film Studies