Madrid, the capital of his heart, pays tribute to Pedro Almodóvar through an exhibition

A filmmaker of women, Pedro Almodóvar has a reputation for being faithful to a handful of actresses who play his heroines, but his muse of yesterday and tomorrow remains Madrid. Until October 20, the city pays tribute to this romantic relationship through the exhibition Madrid, Almodóvar girl. “The story of Pedro Almodóvar and Madrid is a story of mutual love. Pedro Almodóvar is Pedro Almodóvar thanks to Madrid, they are inseparable”explains to AFP the exhibition curator, Pedro Sánchez, author of All about my Madrid (Tout sur mon Madrid).

“He gave Madrid back everything she had given him, and more, as a muse. Madrid appears in all of Almodóvar’s films. She is the real one. Almodóvar girl (the Almodóvar girl), much more than Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura or Marisa Pérez»he continues as he wanders through the exhibition.

To welcome him, he only saw the Conde Duque cultural center: it is in front of its facade that Carmen Maura asks in The law of desire (1987) to a municipal employee cleaning the street by spraying it with water. The unforgettable night scene immortalized the actress in her orange dress, suffocated by the heat of the city in summer. “Many foreigners know Madrid or Spanish culture through its films. As we go to the Trevi Fountain in Rome or to the Amélie bar in Paris, we have a first contact with Madrid with its cinematography”explains Mr. Sánchez.

Through 200 photos from Almodóvar’s 23 films or personal archives, we discover the relationship between the artist from Castile-la-Mancha (center) and the capital. A panel shows a study detailing the percentage of action set in Madrid in all its cinematography: 6% (The Skin I Live In2011) at 100% for seven films. “I never felt like a stranger here”the filmmaker likes to say, who “shares with his favorite city a transgressive, eclectic, critical, open, cheerful, cosmopolitan and friendly personality”according to Pedro Sánchez.

Working-class neighborhoods seen through his camera

This adopted son of Madrid, today the most international Spanish filmmaker, did not come from a good family, unlike most other Spanish artists of Movida, the period of socio-cultural liberation which followed the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 and the advent of democracy. “He also says that being a filmmaker in Spain is like being a bullfighter in Japan.”the commissioner jokes.

Fleeing the Madrid of postcards, he does not hesitate to place his camera in the more popular neighborhoods, with their less obvious beauty, like Vallecas or Concepción. While a map of Madrid reproduces the 272 locations counted in his films, the exhibition also notes the places obsessing the artist: taxis, hardware stores, cemeteries or pharmacies which dot his work.

As Jacques Demy had Rochefort repainted for his LadiesAlmodóvar sometimes resorted to artifice to beautify Madrid. “The colours are very important and totally fictitious. It comes from his memory of Franco’s Spain, in black and white. His way of getting revenge, according to him, is to flood his films with colours.”Mr. Sánchez further explains.

The visitor can thus see the backdrops used to reproduce Pepa’s terrace with panoramic views over all of Madrid in Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (1988), because it would never have supported the weight of the filming equipment.

«It’s an idyllic Madrid” that we see in Parallel mothers (2021) or Juliet (2016), where the heroines have huge Madrid apartments despite an average standard of living. Almodovarian aesthetics go so far as to recreate masterpieces by Magritte, Rothko, Velazquez, Dali, Titian, Hopper in the shots of his films, as a video deciphers.

The filmmaker put a lot of himself into his settings: “We didn’t see Almodóvar’s houses in magazines like some filmmakers, but in his films”says Pedro Sánchez, who recalls that Pain and glory (2019) reproduces his current apartment in Madrid, with some of his own armchairs. “This is my life”the filmmaker would have said when he visited the exhibition, before the public and far from the cameras.