This book offers a comprehensive, film-by-film analysis of the cinema of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, from early transgressive comedies of the 1980s like Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón and Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, to award-winning dramas like Todo sobre mi madre, Hable con ella, and Dolor y gloria. It shows how Almodóvar's films draw on various national cinemas and film genres, including Spanish cinema of the dictatorship, European art cinema, Hollywood melodrama and film noir.


The book argues that the political nature of Almodóvar's work has been obscured by his alignment with the allegedly apolitical Spanish cultural movement known as la movida, but is in fact a form of social critique disguised as frivolity. Almodóvar's films consistently engage with and challenge stereotypes about traditional and contemporary Spain, addressing the country's traumatic past and how it continues to inform the present. Focusing in particular on memory work, the book explains how Almodóvar uses poetic techniques to explore personal and collective trauma. He is not, as is commonly thought, a postmodern filmmaker, but a metamodern one who uses postmodernist techniques with an ethical purpose.


Drawing on scholarship in both English and Spanish, The cinema of Pedro Almodóvar will be of interest to students and scholars of film studies and Hispanic studies, as well as general cinema enthusiasts with a passion for the films of Spain's greatest living director.