Just two days after the US has reopened the borders, Pedro Almodóvar returns to a Hollywood that is full of praise for his latest film, “Parallel Mothers”, and that has made him the protagonist of one of the rooms of the brand new Museum of the Oscars.
“It is a strange sensation, for the first time I felt that it was part of popular culture. Being inside a museum of this size …”, says the Spanish filmmaker in Los Angeles, where in addition to promoting his film he has visited the tribute that he has dedicated the Hollywood Academy to him.
The imposing museum of the institution in charge of delivering the Oscars opened in September and chose Almodóvar to design a space dedicated to his filmography.
After receiving the order, the manchego decided to reflect on his films, “to make the images of one and the other dialogue with each other,” he says.
The room, set in a recognizable ‘Almodovarian’ style, shows twelve audiovisual montages on the themes that have guided the work of the Manchego: the ” noir”, the waning lover, bodies, religious education, guilt and pain, musicals, comedy, Bergman and melodrama, sex and desire, mothers, Müller coffee and family.
“They are put on these huge screens, which I love,” he comments about a room that functions as a staging of the filmmaker’s mind.
No other director has such a large (and personal) space in the more than 28,000 square meters that the building designed by Renzo Piano occupies to house a museum that aspires to be a world reference.
“They were very generous thinking of me, I was very impressed, “ sums up Almodóvar.
Later, in April 2022, the Academy will publish a book on the filmography of Spanish, which will include writings by his brother and producer, Agustín Almodóvar, and Tilda Swinton, star of “La Voz Humana”, among others.
According to Raúl Guzmán, one of the center’s curators, the fascination that Hollywood feels for Almodóvar is as valid now as it was in the late 1980s, when “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” gave him his first Oscar nomination. There is no expiration date for “Almodovarian”.
“Few filmmakers can have adjectives with their name,” Guzmán concludes.
“MOTHERS PARALLELS” BEGINS ITS CAREER FOR THE OSCARS
Proof of the good publicity that the Spanish receive on the other side of the Atlantic is that “Parallel Mothers” -its film number 22- remains a firm candidate for the Oscar, despite the fact that this year it is not the candidate of the Film Academy Spanish in the category of best international film.
The name of Almodóvar appears in the pools of the possible nominees for best director and its protagonist, Penélope Cruz, seems a safe bet in the acting categories after winning the Volpi Cup in Venice.
Even after the opening of the foreign film awards with the triumph of “Parasite” at the Oscars in 2020, some media include “Parallel Mothers” in the list of non-Anglo-Saxon films that could sneak among the candidates for best film.
Sony Pictures will premiere it in New York and Los Angeles on December 24, “in the middle of the season of premieres that are thought to be Oscar-nominated, “ recalls Almodóvar.
“But I don’t think about that, I just want the film to go well,” emphasizes the director.
Before that, the feature film will go through some of the festivals that warm the engines of award season.
The AFI Fest, organized by the American Film Institute to bring the highlights of the international circuit to Los Angeles, will be the first. That’s where the Oscars “lobby” begins.
“The reviews so far are 100% good and very encouraging,” concludes Almodóvar.