!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">

The end of Franco's reign in Spain in the mid-70s ushered in an era known asLa Movida Madrileña and easily the most important filmmaker to emerge during this era was Pedro Almodóvar. Perhaps the most important Spanish-born filmmaker in world cinema next to Luis Buñuel, Almodóvar blazed a trail for a more open and expressive sexual culture on film, creating many important films along with some damn entertaining films that didn't carry the Capital-I-Important label.

Almodóvar also exposed the world at large to many Spanish actresses like Carmen Maura, Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, and Penélope Cruz, to name just a few, along with such actors as Antonio Banderas and Javier Bardem, creating a stock company of performers he would work with many time. From his first Super 8 feature, 1978'sFolle, folle, fólleme, Tim(Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Tim), through this year's Dolor y Gloria (Pain and Glory), Almodóvar has worked consistently over the last 40-plus years, cranking out over 30 feature films.

Nudity has been a consistent element through his work, with sex and sexuality residing at the heart of nearly every one of his features. As an openly gay man, it's not surprising that Almodóvar has blazed a trail for male nudity throughout his career, while never ignoring the inherent beauty in the naked female form. Few, if any, of Almodóvar's leading ladies have refused to appear nude in one of his films and the world is a better place thanks to his open and accepting nudity policy.

Since a substantial portion of his films feature nudity, we're splitting this up into two parts. Let's start by going back to near the beginning of his career when his work moved from serious melodrama to a more heightened melodrama with a comedic bent...

Dark Habits (1983)

In order to secure financing for his third feature, Dark Habits, Almodóvar entered into a financial agreement with wealthy industrialistHervé Hachuel who had a desire to get his long-time girlfriend Cristina Sánchez Pascual into the acting business. Uncertain of her talents, Almodóvar gave Pascualthe ostensible leading role of cabaret singer Yolanda in what ultimately amounted to an ensemble piece in which many of his regular actresses would have equally prominent roles.

When Yolanda's boyfriend overdoses, she finds herself on the run from the law, afraid of being implicated in his death. She seeks refuge in a convent of nuns offering room and board to wayward souls, but soon finds that these aren't a bunch of "Dominique" singing Catholic stereotypes, but rather a pack of wayward souls who themselves offered their lives to the lord. From the heroin addicted lesbian Mother Superior (Julieta Serrano) to the delusional animal lover Sister Damned (Carmen Maura) and the smutty novelist Sister Sewer Rat (Chus Lampreave) these ladies turn the film's title into a cheeky double entendre!

In a classic bid to save the nunnery, the sisters offer to put on a fundraisingbirthday celebration for Mother Superior,with Yolanda as the centerpiece attraction. The film's only nudity comes, appropriately enough, fromCristina Sánchez Pascual,who goes topless in the solitude of her room, only to find Mother Superior ogling her from the doorway...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part I

Matador (1986)

Almodóvar's fifth film was one of the first films to get branded with the newly created NC-17 rating upon its belated release in the US, chronicling the adventures of bullfighter Diego (Nacho Martinez) as he deals with the fallout from a goring injury that has put an end to his career. Finding sexual gratification by watching violent films and starting to act out his own violent fantasies, Diego soon meets a kindred spirit in María (Assumpta Serna), a lawyer with a similarly violent and kinky side. Also in the mix in Àngel (Antonio Banderas), a bullfighting student who attempts to emulate his teacher Diego's violent tendencies, though he doesn't quite have the stomach for it.

A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part I

Early in the film, Diego's girlfriend Eva (Eva Cobo, above) gets attacked by Àngel in a bid for him to prove he's not gay. Unfortunately for him, he ejaculates before he can properly assault her, which leads to Eva not pressing charges against him. While Àngel attempts, unsuccessfully, to take the rap for Diego's many murders throughout the film, Diego's relationship with Assumpta Serna's Maria begins to escalate. In the film's final moments, Eva leads police to Maria's home, afraid that Diego may have murdered her as well, but they find them both dead. Maria stabbed Diego during sex, killing him, before she shoots herself. The police detective marvels at how happy they look, their bodies entwined in mid-coitus, and it's difficult to argue with him in that regard...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part I

In his book "Almodóvar onAlmodóvar," the director said that he considers Matador and the upcoming Kika to be his weakest efforts. Though the messaging is a bit muddled in regard to the parallel lines between sex and violence, it's not a total failure of a film, either. It deals, as so many of Almodóvar's films do, with the notion of denying your own impulses to conform to society and the lengths to which people will go in order to seem normal to the outside world. It's perhaps not as gripping and fresh as it must have seemed in the mid-80s, but it's a crucial film inAlmodóvar's growth as a filmmaker...

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990)

After earning international acclaim and his first Oscar nomination for 1988's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1990's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is the director's first stab at what's commonly known as a "two-hander." Reuniting with Banderas, Almodóvar cast the Spanish stud asRicky, a mentally unstable young man who is released from the asylum he's been in with claims of his having been cured. In actuality, Ricky was sleeping with his doctor, who was all too eager to give the troubled young man the proverbial get out of jail free card. Upon his release, Ricky decides to track down adult star Marina Osorio (Victoria Abril), with whom he had a one night stand some time back.

Stalking her back to her home, Ricky breaks in and takes Marina hostage, informing her that he is going to make her fall in love with him, and thus begins one of the more strangely touching films about Stockholm Syndrome ever made. Ricky and Marina are both tortured souls, in search of that elusive true love they think will be the salve for all of their problems, which is what ultimately brings them together. Ricky's controlling behavior is at first a major turn-off for Marina, but after he gets beaten within an inch of his life for robbing a drug dealer, the roles reverse and she begins taking care of him.

The psychology behind her decision isn't explored in much depth, but the audience is left to infer that whatever Marina's got going on in her life must be substantially worse than what Ricky's offering, and over time he's less threatening and more vulnerable, morphing into what it is that she has been seeking in a man. It's a play on the Beauty and the Beast myth, showing that love is the only thing which will soothe the savage beast. Thankfully Almodóvar is savvy enough to not dwell on the darker ramifications of Ricky's actions, and he mostly keeps the mood light throughout the film.

The film is notable for many reasons, not least of whichwas Almodóvar's battle with the studio to not get slapped with an X rating due to the sexual content of the film. During the appeal to the ratings board, the MPAA revamped theratings system, creating the NC-17 and thus negating the need for him to make any substantive changes to the film. It's also the film in which he split from his stable leading lady Carmen Maura and began a long working relationship with Victoria Abril.

A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part I

Perhaps the film's most notable scene comes just 24 minutes in when Abril is in the tub and a motorized scuba diver toy goes exploring in her, ahem, canyon...

High Heels (1991)

For his follow-up, Almodóvar jumped headlong into the world of classic melodrama with a mother/daughter sexual battle of the wills for the ages, High Heels. In much the same vein assuch famousmelodramas as Mildred Pierce, Imitation of Life, and especially Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata,(which is itself referenced in the film)the focus here is on the lasting damage that can be caused between a mother and daughter when a man comes between them. After a decade and a half absence, torch singer Becky (Marisa Paredes) attempts to reinsert herself into the life of her news anchor daughter Rebeca (Victoria Abril), who is now married to one of her mother's ex-boyfriends, Manuel (Féodor Atkine).

When Manuel turns up dead, suspicions point to Isabel (Miriam Díaz-Aroca), Rebeca's television sign language interpreter who was Manuel's mistress. However, Rebeca goes on the air on the day of Manuel's funeral and confesses to his murder. The intrigues begin to pile up, culminating in a tense visitation scene where Becky comes to see Rebeca in jail and the two lay out their many failings to one another, coercing Rebeca to admit that she did not, in fact, murder Manuel. Eventually, Rebeca is released when there isn't enough evidence to convict her of the crime.

Becky suffers a heart attack and on her death bed, Rebeca confesses to her mother than she really did murder Manuel, but Becky is happy to take the fall for it as she doesn't have much longer to live. While it is certainly dressed up in the more open sexual politics of 1990s, the film oozes classic Hollywood melodrama: deadbeat mother attempts make amends with a daughter she abandoned and ends up taking the fall for a crime her daughter committed in the ultimate act of love.

The film only features one brief nude scene from Victoria Abril, whose nipples pop out of her corset while she has a fling with Letal, a man who performs a drag routine as Becky...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part I

Kika (1993)

Most people associate the start of the "Reality TV" boom with the early aughts, but Almodóvar proved himself quite prescient by setting his next film, Kika, in the world of reality television. Madrid native Verónica Forqué plays the title character, a makeup artist caught up in a scam being run by a wealthy American writer Nicholas (Peter Coyote) and his step-son Ramón (Álex Casanovas). Nicholas moonlights by writing for a sensationalist tabloid news show run byAndrea Scarface (Victoria Abril) a psychologist-cum-Jerry Springer-type, always in search of the most scandalous stories to tantalize her viewers.

Like most Almodóvar films, this one revolves heavily around a murder and the subsequent fallout from both the act and the cover-up. When Kika shacks up with Ramón, we get a nice look at Verónica Forqué's breasts as they share a Polaroid camera to document their lovemaking...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part I

Nicholas also has a dalliance with the sensationally stacked Anabel Alonso, who flashes her fantastic fun bags before the two get down to business...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part I

The film's final nude scene comes near the end of the film when Ramón beds the beautiful Bibí Andersen, who bares all three Bs before getting murdered by the troubled young man, eventually leading to his downfall when Kika discovers the crime...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part IA SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part I

Live Flesh (1997)

Following the skinless Flower of My Secret, Almodóvar returned to the world of high eroticism his 1997 film Live Flesh. The film would mark his first adaptation of another artist's work, based on the UK novel of the same name by the late Ruth Rendell—whose work was adapted recently by François Ozon with The New Girlfriend—though Almodóvar would obviously movethe novel's setting to Spain. The film centers around Victor (Liberto Rabal), a recently paroled criminal who seeks to make amends for his violent actions in the past by working with the police officer David (Javier Bardem) who is now confined to a wheelchair after Victor shot him several years back.

The object of Victor's affections is Elena (Francesca Neri), a junkie he had a one-night stand with before going to prison (heavy parallel there to Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!). He meets up with her again at her father's funeral and she rejects his advances, leading him into the arms of Clara (Ángela Molina), an older woman who takes pity on Victor and offers to give him the sexual education he never received. We soon discover that Elena is actually David's wife now, and with David tailing Victor, he too begins a clandestine affair with Clara. It's all very twisted and complicated love quadrangle, but it's the sort of thing we've come to expect from Almodóvar at this point.

Though Àngela Molina manages to keep her clothes on throughout the film, Francesca Neri picks up the slack nicely, offering Victor some pity sex in hopes that it will drive him away once and for all—sorry Elena, that's not how that works...

A SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Pedro Almodóvar's Films Part I

Though this would mark the first collaboration with Almodóvar for both Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, the future married couple had starred together several years earlier in the hilariously titled JamónJamón: A Tale of Ham and Passion. Although she only appears in the film's first scene, this would be Cruz's first of six appearances in his films, serving as Almodóvar's transition away from working with Victoria Abril.

And this is where we're going to take a break. Next week, we'll cover the back half of Almodóvar's career, starting with the film that won him his first Oscar and saw him moving in bold new directions as he gets a much better handle on his craft.

Pedro Almodóvar Films with Nudity for Which We Don't Have Content

Labyrinth of Passion

Pedro Almodóvar Films without Female Nudity

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

Law of Desire

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

The Flower of My Secret

Bad Education

I'm So Excited

Pain and Glory

*******************

Check out the Other Directors in Our Ongoing "SKIN-depth Look”Series

Catherine Breillat: Part One

Catherine Breillat: Part Two

Blake Edwards

Spike Lee

John Landis

Ingmar Bergman

David Cronenberg: Part One

David Cronenberg: Part Two

François Truffaut

Bernardo Bertolucci

Roman Polanski

Mike Nichols

Louis Malle

Steven Soderbergh

Kathryn Bigelow

Oliver Stone

Nicolas Roeg

David Fincher

Francis Ford Coppola

Ken Russell: Part One

Ken Russell: Part Two

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Park Chan-wook

Robert Altman: Act I

Robert Altman: Act II

Adrian Lyne

Martin Scorsese

Jane Campion

Bob Fosse

Dario Argento

Wes Craven

Tobe Hooper

Todd Haynes

Danny Boyle

Stanley Kubrick

Paul Thomas Anderson

David Lynch

Brian De Palma

Paul Schrader

Paul Verhoeven