As Spain’s Pedro Almodóvar continues making the festival circuit rounds for his new film “Dolor y Gloria” – “Pain & Glory” – he spent an evening at the New York Film Festival with Kent Jones, the festival’s director, to discuss some of the cinematic influences that make up the thematic infrastructure of his new Oscar contender.
Over the course of the roughly 50-minute conversation, which can be viewed in full below, Almodóvar and Jones touch on a handful of films that encompass not only various styles but also different countries and perspective—including Roberto Rossellini’s “Journey to Italy” and Joseph Mankiewicz’s “All About Eve.”
Almodóvar’s career is peppered with works centered on female protagonists in which he explores their relationships—a characteristic that the writer-director suggested can be attributed to his homeland, where there are “many more great actresses than actors.”
The inspiration is rooted in an even more personal place for Almodóvar, however—his own home life. He said as much when discussing Manuela, the women at the center of his 1999 movie “All About My Mother.”
“Through Manuela, I’m talking about a quality which I think women in general have, or at least the women I was surrounded (with) when I was a child, which is the capacity to (have) faith, to interpret and many times to lie—in order to actually save a piece of the home,” he said. “During my childhood, the women had a lot less prejudice than the men.”
Most of the conversation revolves around the topic of personal experience that directors bring to their work, and it makes sense in the context of “Pain & Glory.” Many have viewed Almodóvar’s new film – in which Antonio Banderas plays a film director journeying and reminiscing through his memories – as a pseudo-autobiographical work, a la Federico Fellini’s “8 ½.” But that relationship between director and actor can only go so far in a collaboration, Almodóvar says.
“The director is always the mirror of the actor,” he said. “The director can only be a mirror and hold all the issues that the actor has, but which they have to resolve for themselves.”
Watch the full conversation below.
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