COUNTRY PROFILE
In the coming weeks and months we are going to publish a film profile of each and every EU country.
In our first profile, we focus on Spain and its most famous film maker, Pedro Almodóvar. In our special coverage of Almodovar, we are bringing you the details of his latest film Volver which won Best Screenplay & Best Actress awards at Cannes 2006. The film has got rave reviews in London. Next on this page will be France.
LONDON SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL: A window to the diversity and creativity of Spanish contemporary cinema, the second edition of the London Spanish Film Festival 8 - 20 September 2006 showcased a wide array of films, including many premières and previews. (Law of Desire), rewarded at this year Cannes Film Festival for Pedro Almodóvar's Volver. The Festival dedicated a small retrospective to the actress. 
Among the directors and actors who attended the festival are some of Spanish cinema's brightest stars such as Carmen Maura, right
SPAIN
General data for 2005
Inhabitants: 43,038,000
GDP $678.0bn
Price for a coffee €1
Cinema-going
Total admissions 126,006,491
Number of screens 4,383
Average ticket price €5.50
Production (feature films only)
Total feature films produced 142
Co-productions 53
Average production budget €3m
Film funding from main national film institution €110m
TV investments in film financing
Distribution
Total films released 1,695
Local films released (only first run) 343
Local films market share 16,7%
US films market share 60%
Most successful local film (admissions) Torrente 3 (3,551,138)
Most successful international film (admissions) Star Wars (3,672,541)
Film institutions financially supporting films
ICAA
Institut Català de les Indústries Culturals
Instituto Valenciano de Cinematografía Ricardo Muñoz Suay
Consorcio Audiovisual de Galicia
VOLVER by Pedro Almodóvar
VOLVER is a meeting of “Mildred Pierce” and “Arsenic and Old Lace”, combined with
the surrealistic naturalism of my fourth film, “¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!!”
(“What have I done to Deserve This?”), that is, Madrid and its lively working-class neighbourhoods, where the immigrants from the various Spanish provinces share dreams, lives and fortune with a multitude of ethnic groups and other races.
At the heart of this social framework, three generations of women survive wind, fire and even death, thanks to goodness, audacity and a limitless vitality.
VOLVER has got rave reviews in the British newspapers after its release in August.
he Guardian has given five stars to the film and the Times declares 'performance of her career' for Cruz. Here's the Times review of the film. The Times, London. 25 August 2006 Even the most fervent critics of Pedro Almodóvar cannot fail to be impressed by the wit the Spanish maestro brings to Volver. Age has mellowed his two-fingered arrogance towards convention. Time has polished the craft. Volver is a moist and creamy joy about incest and murder; a thriller crammed with strong, anxious women and a homage to his late mother — who, he admits, was actually more interested in the box- office returns than the artistic merits of any of his films. The title (literal translation: “coming back”) plugs into so many Almodóvarian sockets it seems pointless to list them. Fans will be happy enough to see the director reunited with several of his favourite muses, including Carmen Maura, who haunts the film as a dead matriarch whose marble grave is being polished by her grown-up children in the opening scene. Maura’s death in a suspicious fire three years earlier has left a smouldering mystery in a small town in La Mancha. Her ghost, the superstitious locals claim, stalks the streets at midnight. Her daughter, Raimunda, played by Penélope Cruz, can’t stand this mad speculation. She has other fights on her hands: a senile aunt, an overly inquisitive daughter and an empty bank account. What will never change is Almodóvar’s willingness to gamble with our suspended sense of disbelief. It’s what makes and breaks his films. Cruz is the most preposterously glamorous hospital cleaner ever to set foot on screen, but the director manipulates this irony quite brilliantly. The Hollywood diva acts her grumpy heart out as a Dickensian widow with few admirers. But the camera begs to differ. The wobbly shots of her shapely buttocks and the overhead close-ups of her cleavage — the most spectacular in world cinema, according to the director (and frankly who’s going to argue?) — are mischievous distractions that wrong-foot every gloomy expectation. It’s this painful discrepancy between the life that Raimunda thinks she inhabits and the rather more magical one that Almodóvar paints around her that transforms the film into such an enthralling watch. Gossip oils the plot. The village wenches are for ever on the move, clumping about La Mancha in high-heel wedges, clutching and picking at their black peasant frocks and blaming the persistent wind for fires and wild rumours. Raimunda has to grapple with a long queue of family crises. First in line is Agustina, a childhood friend stricken with cancer (Blanca Portillo). Next is an incestuous husband who has to be knifed and parked in the nearest available freezer. Then a very undead-looking Maura pops out from under the spare bed in her sister’s spare room. And an amorous film producer falls in love with her when she “borrows” an absent friend’s restaurant around the corner to ease her debts. Almodóvar’s appetite for secrets and buried grief is never easy to reconcile with his taste for gushy sentiment. But Volver is a terrific exception. The comedy is as raw and shallow as a Joe Orton play. The sassy female cast are an unpredictable delight, and the imperious Cruz delivers what can only be described as the performance of her career. JAMES CHRISTOPHER, The Times, London.
Pedro Almodovar says: "The most difficult thing about “Volver” has been writing its synopsis. My films are becoming more and more difficult to tell and summarize in a few lines. Fortunately, this difficulty has not been reflected in the work of the actors, or of the crew" .
Talking of Pénelope Cruz, he says "Penélope is at the height of her beauty. It’s a cliché but in her case it’s true. Those eyes, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts!! Penélope has got one of the most spectacular cleavages in world cinema. Looking at her has been one of the great pleasures of this shoot."VOLVER is not a surrealistic comedy although it may seem so at times. The living and the dead coexist without any discord, causing situations that are either hilarious or filled with a deep, genuine emotion. "It’s a film about the culture of death in my native La Mancha" adds Almodovar. The people there practice it with an admirable naturalness. The way in which the dead continue to be present in their lives, the richness and humanity of their rites mean that the dead never die.
VOLVER destroys all the clichés about “black” Spain and offers a Spain that is as real as it is the opposite. A Spain that is white, spontaneous, funny, intrepid, supportive and fair.
PEDRO ALMODÓVAR, right, was born in Calzada de Calatrava, province of Ciudad Real, in the heart of La Mancha, in the 50s. When he was eight, he emigrated with his family to Estremadura.
At seventeen, he left home and moved to Madrid, with no money and no job, but with a
very specific project in mind: to study cinema and direct films. It was impossible to enroll in the Official Film School because Franco had just closed it. As he couldn’t learn the language, he decided to learn the content, that is, life, living… Despite the dictatorship that was suffocating the country, for an adolescent from the provinces
Madrid represented culture, independence and freedom. He worked at many, sporadic jobs but couldn’t buy his first Super-8mm camera until he got a “serious” job at the National Telephone Company of Spain where he worked for twelve years as an administrative assistant, twelve years which he also devoted to multiple activities which provided his real training as a filmmaker and as a person.
In the mornings, in theTelephone Company, he got an in-depth knowledge of the Spanish middle class at thestart of the consumer era, its dramas and its misfortunes, a real gold mine for a future story teller. In the evenings and nights, he wrote, loved, acted with the mythicalindependent theater group Los Goliardos and made films in Super-8 (his only school as a filmmaker).
He collaborated with various underground magazines and wrote stories,some of which were published. He was a member of a parodic punk-rock group, Almodóvar and McNamara, etc.
PEDRO ALMODÓVAR had the good fortune that the opening of his first film in commercial cinemas coincided with the beginning of democracy in Spain. After 18 months of eventful shooting on 16mm, in 1980 he opened “Pepi, Luci, Bom…”, a no-budget film made as a cooperative effort.In 1986, he founded the production company El Deseo S.A. with his brother Agustín. Their first project was “Law of Desire”. Since then, they have produced all the films that Pedro has written and directed, and have also produced other young directors.
In 1988, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” brought him international recognition. Since then, his films have opened all around the world. With “All About my Mother” he won his first Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, and also the Golden Globe, the César, 3 European Film Awards, the David de Donatello, 2 BAFTAs, 7 Goyas and 45 other awards. Three years later, “Talk to Her” had the same or better fortune (Academy Award for Best Script, 5 European Film Awards, 2 BAFTAs, the Nastro de Argento, the César and many other awards throughout the world but not in Spain).
He produced three very special films, highly rated throughout the world for their valor and delicacy (“My Life Without Me”, “The Holy Girl” and “The Secret Life of Words”). In 2004, “Bad Education” was chosen to open the Cannes Festival. It received extraordinary reviews throughout the world, was nominated for numerous awards (Independent Spirit Awards, BAFTAs, César, European Film Awards) and won the prestigious Award for Best Foreign Film given by the New York Critics’ Circle, and also the Nastro de Argento. Today, he is probably the director who enjoys the greatest freedom and independence when working.
Click here to access an interview in audio with Almodovar & Penelope Cruz through the bfi site