Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

Keywords: kitsch, colorful, postmodern, melodrama, working-class-kitschbaroque aesthetic

Abstract

The aim of this essay was to investigate the rapport between cinematic landscapes, performing narratives, graphic design innovations of Almodóvar’s colorful cinema space. However, cinema is a field particularly wide, which is not only described through the films it produces but extends both to the spaces and times in which the films are performed, as well as to the system that creates and interprets them (Nicolaidou, 2004). Additionally, the concept of cinema cannot be seen independently of the concepts of space and time, as it is "an art of discontinuous space and time" (Stavridis, 2005), which is easily observed in the structure of a film.

Almodóvar's films appeared with the fall of the dictator Franco which brought the loosening of censorship and the outbreak of an explosive sexual liberation. From barren to experiences and new ideas La Mancha, where he was born and raised, Almodóvar found himself when he moved to Madrid. It was expressed through the informal underground movement «Movida», with characteristics of the time the hedonistic atmosphere, bright colors, flashy clothes, contempt for conventions and a total disbelief in everything boring describe the mood of the current, which broke with the past and deify the ephemeral present. His heroes move on the fringes of lawlessness, homosexuality, drugs, love triangles and uncontrollable outbursts of violence find an unexpectedly harmonious way of coexistence in the Almodóbarian universe, which is enriched by maintaining its coherence. His characters portray sexuality and gender as fluid. Characters are open to changes in their preferences and are swayed by the sudden attraction they may feel towards a person.

“When a film has minimal mistakes, it is considered incomplete. When it's full of flaws, we say it has style." With this quote, Almodóvar sums up the «camp aesthetic» of his films, creating his own distinct school. Absurdity, blasphemy, ironic humor that flirts with kitsch, found their place in scenarios full of passion, with usually marginal characters at the center. He chose to mix the lighthearted mood with pop culture references and postmodern storytelling, touching on subjects that no one dared touch. Main features of his work include the refusal to recognize the authority of any single style, of what art is. and the collapsing of the distinction between high culture and mass or popular culture, and between art and everyday life. The melodrama is for some superficial and for others the equivalent of a soap opera, melodrama is perhaps the most misunderstood genre in the history of cinema but not for Almodóvar. Unlike most directors, who avoid serving specific genres, the Spaniard was fascinated by the unbridled passions, moral reflections, strong twists and expressively intense performances that make up melodramas.

A member of an art punk band championing Madrid's vibrant nightlife, Almodóvar incorporated his diverse musical influences into his cinematic language, creating a quirky sonic mosaic of his own, '50s Spanish ballads, flamenco, French chansons and classical music, without their coexistence is alienating.

Through his films, he managed to disentangle female representations from the dominant male straight gaze in cinema and acquire an unprecedented exuberance. In his cinema, women do not fit into molds, they openly express their sexual urges and fantasies, they are affectionate as well as vengeful, capable of humiliating and loving uncontrollably.

Through a series of selected films, a first recording and classification of references, parameters and analyzes was made in the investigation of the narrative and visual tools that the director uses to be able to convey the intensity and atmosphere of such a colorful and glistening aesthetic. Such an aesthetic that Ana María Sanchez calls a working-class-kitschbaroque aesthetic in mind, the perfect background for a melodrama whose protagonists are neither affluent (as in most Hollywood melodramas) nor – to Spaniards – exotic because of the familiarity of what we see on screen (Sanchez, 2020).