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PARTISAN REVIEW
strip subtext to the main plot: "This is nothing more than a love story!" says
the producer. Perhaps that is also Almodovar's own artistic intention, but I
sadly think that the selling of "soft" porn to less hardened viewers is high on
his "agenda." Almodovar's distinguishing features are still evident: an as–
sortment of ugly-fascinating women; garish colors; a technique which bril–
liantly breaks all the Hollywood rules. But the joyful atmosphere seems
forced , and the ending (in spite of the usual upbeat concluding song) disap–
pointingly flat.
I have said that Almodovar's films take place in the city, in contrast to
earlier Spanish films. The fact is that in his movies nature has gone by the
board. The city is the reality, the country an illusion. Yet in
Dark Habits,
a
tiger is kept prowling in the nun's yard; in
What Have I Done to Deserve
This?,
a lizard runs frantically underfoot in the cramped apartment; in
Ner–
vous BreaJulown,
Peppa not only raises tropical plants but keeps chickens and
rabbits on the terrace of her high-rise. These disoriented creatures are not
just pets; they are emblems for their owners ofa wilder, simpler life, where
animals ran free. They represent the other side of the baroque equation:
artifice/nature. Peppa tells her animals she would like to take them away and
start over, "like Noah."
Of course, as
Berta's Motives
asserted, the natural world is perhaps
finished in a sense - as is the kind of film which portrayed and used it so ef–
fectively: through a slow, dream-like pace; through lonely pastoral settings;
through mysterious implications of transcendence. Evidently, Almodovar has
made a break with this genre. One can only go back and view the haunting
old films retrospectively. Yet both the old and new show the persistence ofa
national preoccupation with fundamental ambivalences. Dwight Macdonald
said that "cinema .. . is mute when it comes to expressing ideas." But he
hadn't seen these Spanish movies.
