A Companion to Pedro Almodovar

Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction: The Skin He Lives In 1
Marvin D'Lugo and Kathleen M. Vernon

Part I Bio-Filmography 19

1 Almodovar's Self-Fashioning: The Economics and Aesthetics of Deconstructive Autobiography 21
Paul Julian Smith

2 Creative Beginnings in Almodovar's Work 39
Francisco A. Zurian

3 Almodovar and Hitchcock: A Sorcerer's Apprenticeship 59
Dona Kercher

4 A Life, Imagined and Otherwise: The Limits and Uses of Autobiography in Almodovar's Films 88
Alberto Mira

Part II Spanish Contexts 105

5 El Deseo's "Itinerary": Almodovar and the Spanish Film Industry 107
Marina Diaz Lopez

6 Almodovar and Spanish Patterns of Film Reception 129
Josetxo Cerdan and Miguel Fernandez Labayen

7 Memory, Politics, and the Post-Transition in Almodovar's Cinema 153
Juan Carlos Ibanez

8 The Ethics of Oblivion: Personal, National, and Cultural Memories in the Films of Pedro Almodovar 176
Adrian Perez Melgosa

Part III At the Limits of Gender 201

9 Our Rapists, Ourselves: Women and the Staging of Rape in the Cinema of Pedro Almodovar 203
Leora Lev

10 Paternity and Pathogens: Mourning Men and the Crises of Masculinity in Todo Sobre Mi Madre and Hable Con Ella 225
Dean Allbritton

11 Domesticating Violence in the Films of Pedro Almodovar 244
Noelia Saenz

12 La piel que habito: A Story of Imposed Gender and the Struggle for Identity 262
Francisco A. Zurian

Part IV Re-readings 279

13 Re-envoicements and Reverberations in Almodovar's Macro-Melodrama 281
Marsha Kinder

14 The Flower of His Secret: Carne tremula and the Mise en Scene of Desire 304
Celestino Deleyto

15 Scratching the Past on the Surface of the Skin: Embodied Intersubjectivity, Prosthetic Memory, and Witnessing in Almodovar's La mala educacion 322
Julian Daniel Gutierrez-Albilla

16 Almodovar's Stolen Images 345
Javier Herrera

Part V Global Almodovar 365

17 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: From Madrid (1988) to New York (2010) 367
Isolina Ballesteros

18 Almodovar's Global Musical Marketplace 387
Kathleen M. Vernon

19 Almodovar and Latin America: The Making of a Transnational Aesthetic in Volver 412
Marvin D'Lugo

20 Is there a French Almodovar? 432
Jean-Claude Seguin

21 Almodovar in Asia: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and LGBT Film Culture 453
E. K. Tan

Part VI Art and Commerce 469

22 To the Health of the Author: Art Direction in Los abrazos rotos 471
John D. Sanderson

23 Making Spain Fashionable: Fashion and Design in Pedro Almodovar's Cinema 495
Gerard Dapena

24 Almodovar, Cyberfandom, and Participatory Culture 524
Vicente Rodriguez Ortega

Index 551