Almodovar

I don't know why, but I found myself thinking about him recently. Which is spooky because I just checked and he has a new film coming out soon, but there has been no publicity for it yet.

The thing is, that there is a gap between how he is perceived and what his films are really like - though the gap may be closing, since the last few films since Bad Education have been darker and darker.

For years though, he had the reputation of being a funny, quirky, crazy left-field film-maker, a fun night out. And they are visually stunning and beautiful, there's no denying it.

But this reputation didn't really take into account the breath-takingly nihilistic and dark world view beneath all the surface flash. What he seems to be saying (I realised this especially with All About My Mother) is that men are mostly all bastards, and all women are fools for putting up with them.

Male characters come out particularly badly in his films. They are kidnappers and psychopaths (Antonio Banderas in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down), abusers and paedophiles (the father in Volver, the priest in Bad Education) rapists, (the funny, sympathetic seeming nurse in Talk To Her who rapes a girl in a coma) - even the transvestite Lola in All About My Mother, supposedly in touch with her feminine side, turns out to be a source of death and destruction " You are not a human being , Lola. You are an epidemic." A bleak view of masculinity.