The 3 best books by Pedro Almodóvar

Yes, we talk about Pedro Almodóvar and books. Because the scripts by Pedro Almodovar they also deserve to be read in addition to being seen represented on stage. Beyond the particular strangely colorful scenography to cover grounds or characters taken by souls that also seem to be soaked in bright colors from the intense darkness that reigns in the depths of the soul.

Something similar happens with Woody Allen or at the time with Hitchcock to name two of the greatest filmmakers. Literature goes beyond the initial format to end up covering any manifestation in the form of the creative text of the day. Approaching scripts brings a sense of behind-the-scenes insight into what the author is preparing for his audience.

In the case of Almodóvar, observing from within the plot itself has a special taste in the case of the characters. If something has a script, that is life. When a guy like Almodóvar starts scripting, capable, as we already know, of looking for the stripping of each protagonist to beyond the skin, what we are left with is the final search for everything that moves us in that reflection that is the characterization and psychological profiling of those who move the plot, souls like ours.

Top 3 recommended scripts by Pedro Almodóvar

The Skin I Live In

Not that I was very Almodóvar. But this movie changed my perspective. Surely because it came to me at the right time, that moment that makes your tastes take an unexpected turn to open up to new possibilities with the initiation of the matter and the discovery that broadening the prism implies ...

Since his wife suffered burns all over her body in a car accident, plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard has been interested in creating a new skin with which he could have saved her. Twelve years later he manages to cultivate it in his own laboratory, a skin sensitive to caresses, but a real armor against all aggression. To achieve this, he has used the possibilities provided by cell therapy.

In addition to years of study and experimentation, Robert needed a human guinea pig, an accomplice, and no scruples. Scruples were never a problem, they weren't part of his character. Marilia, the woman who took care of him from the day he was born, is his accomplice. And with regard to the human guinea pig ... At the end of the year dozens of young people of both sexes disappear from their homes, in many cases of their own free will. One of these young people ends up sharing with Robert and Marilia the splendid mansion, El Cigarral. And he does it against his will ...

pain and glory

The autobiography, although it is nuanced towards the romantic, is not made for political leaders and other mobs in search of self-promotion, atonement or whatever. Nothing more abhorrent than that narrative in a tone of confession but emptier than a plate after fasting. In Almodóvar's case, only that act of real restraint ends up provoking a sincere reflection of what he is, of the fears that grip him and of what may be left of hope. Raw truths that thrill ...

Salvador Mallo is a veteran film director suffering from multiple ailments, but the worst of his ills is the inability to continue shooting. The mixture of medicines and drugs makes Salvador spend most of the day prostrate. This state of sleeplessness takes him to a time in his life that he never visited as a narrator: his childhood in the sixties, when he emigrated with his parents to a town in Valencia in search of prosperity. His first adult love also reappears, already in Madrid in the eighties, and the pain that the breakup caused.

Salvador takes refuge in writing as the only therapy to forget the unforgettable. This exercise takes him back to the early discovery of cinema, when films were projected on a whitewashed wall, in the open air, smelling of pee, jasmine and a summer breeze. Again, you will discover that the cinema can be your only salvation in the face of pain, absence and emptiness.

Parallel mothers

The thing about Almodóvar and the woman has something of a leitmotif in his work. Nobody escapes that force of the feminine that sweeps many of his works with iconic mission. The feminine turned into a universe concentrated in each protagonist, in all their actions, their motivations and their struggles. A work that delves into that notion that for Almodóvar concentrates the feminine and the maternal as images of the only possible eternity from a vision of imminent motherhood looking into unexpected abysses.

Two women, Janis and Ana, coincide in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. They are both single and accidentally got pregnant. Janis, middle-aged, has no regrets and in the hours leading up to delivery she is full; the other, Ana, is a teenager and is scared, sorry and traumatized. Janis tries to cheer her up as they sleepwalk through the hospital corridor. The few words that cross in those hours will create a very close bond between the two, which chance will take care of developing and complicating in such a resounding way that it will change the lives of both.

Other interesting books by Pedro Almodóvar

the last dream

Put to talk about himself, Pedro Almodóvar unleashes himself in this book, even more than in Pain and Glory, to continue doing the task of reconstruction or at least probing, in what we call soul. The result is a work for mythomaniacs and movie buffs in search of the ultimate motives of the creator.

This book is the closest thing to a fragmented autobiography. [...] The reader will end up obtaining the maximum information from me as a filmmaker, as a storyteller and the way in which my life mixes one thing and the other».

This is how the author defines this volume, in a brilliant introduction that also serves as a perspective: the twelve stories that make it up cover various periods, from the late sixties to the present, and they reflect some of his obsessions. more intimate, in addition to his evolution as an artist.

The dark school years, the influence of fiction in life, the unexpected effects of chance, the sophistication of humor, the drawbacks of fame, the fascination for books or experimentation with narrative genres are some of the themes that populate This must-have book, which contains multiple layers of reading.