The Almodóvar Collection review: ‘The legendary director’s early work dazzles’

If any filmmaker’s movies are ripe for restoration it’s Pedro Almodovar’s early work, and Studiocanal have done a magnificent job with this boxset. The DVDs are an improvement over previous releases but it’s the Blu-ray transfers that really dazzle. The films, which cover the master’s work from 1983 through to 1995, have never looked better. Now the colours really pop and the visuals are rich and lush, especially as the set progresses, plus there are new cast and crew interviews to put it all into context.

Made on the cheap in 1983, Dark Habits looks a bit dated now but its humour remains razor-sharp. When her lover overdoses a crappy cabaret singer flees from the police and hides in a convent in what amounts to a very different sister act to Whoopi Goldberg’s. The nuns are a debauched bunch who either inject heroin, write trashy novels, keep a tiger for a pet, plot blackmail or succumb to lesbian lust – which makes for an outrageous comedy that doesn’t judge its characters but revels in their eccentricities.

The lead in Almodovar’s debut film Pepi, Luci, Bom (which, along with other early features Labyrinth Of Passion and Matador, is sadly absent from this boxset due to rights issues) and a supporting player in Dark Habits, Carmen Maura solidified her status as Pedro’s muse in 1984’s What Have I Don’t To Deserve This? It’s another black comedy, this time about a put-upon wife and mother struggling to makes end meet in a pokey towerblock. Pedro pushes the envelope further by having Maura pimp out her son to a paedophile dentist, there’s a kinky hooker for a neighbour and some Hitchockian suspense involving a blood-spattered lizard that holds the key to a murder – making for a very quirky and really funny movie.

There are Hitchcockian touches, too, to The Law Of Desire – the director’s 1987 breakthrough film that benefited from a bigger budget and an international release. It’s a thriller with Gothic touches and a murder in the middle, which is very Hitchcock, but it’s also a sex comedy and a gay love story and it sets out tropes (letters as narration, ravishing cinematography and stirring Spanish music) that have featured heavily in Pedro’s work since. Maura is back as a fabulously sexy trans woman, the sister of a filmmaking brother who is beguiled by the rough charms of a young and gorgeous Antonio Banderas, and the film is a mad, magnificent whirl of theatrics, passion and some (for 1987) very graphic gay sex scenes.

Kika

The Law Of Desire put Pedro on the international map and Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (1988) secured him a permanent place amongst the world’s best, most inventive and singular of moviemakers. In this most brilliantly barmy of comedies Maura is the pregnant Pepa and Banderas and Rossy de Palma are among the samplers of her sleeping pill-laced gazpacho. Throw in increasingly unhinged behaviour and a moped chase through the streets of Madrid and you have the director’s most sheerly enjoyable romp.

Not so Kika (1993), which looks lovely but is a real mess of a thriller that, lurching from one scene to the next and featuring an ill-judged rape, never gels. Having TV presenter Victoria Abril strap a camera to her head is an interesting touch that foretells our present-day need to document everything, but otherwise it’s a muddled blip on Pedro’s otherwise stellar filmography.

Thankfully The Flower Of My Secret (1995) was a return to form – a florid, seductive melodrama about a novelist (Marisa Parades) whose marriage and life are falling apart. Full of colourful and intriguing characters, it’s an accomplished piece of filmmaking from a man who hasn’t put a foot wrong since (critics can say what they like about I’m So Excited – it’s hilarious) and whose latest, Julieta, proves he’s still at the top of his game.

Rating: 5/5

The Pedro Almodóvar Collection is out, now priced £49.99 on Blu-ray and £44.99 on DVD.

Words by Simon Button