Episode 25: Live Flesh – The Transgressive Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, Part 1

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Kat and Samm begin an exploration of the films of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar. This episode focuses on his collaborations with actor Antonio Banderas, beginning with 1986’s explicit serial killer film Matador, where a young would-be bullfighter (Banderas) confesses to several murders, though it’s immediately apparent that the real killer (or killers) is still on the loose.

This was followed closely by controversial romantic comedy Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, 1989), where Banderas returns as a man recently released from an asylum who kidnaps a junkie actress (Almodóvar regular Victoria Abril), because he’s in love with her. He’s convinced that if he can just make her reciprocate his love, they could lead a happy life together. Almodóvar and Banderas teamed up again several decades later for the labyrinthine La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In, 2011). In this adaptation of Thierry Jonquet’s novel Mygale and Georges Franju’s film Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1960), a doctor (Banderas) experiments on the skin of a beautiful young patient (Vera Cruz), but all is not as it seems.