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MATADOR. Pedro Almodóvar.

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In principle, I wanted to write a story in which death was a palpable presence. In terms of characters and culture, I identify more with Buñuel's "Archibaldo de la Cruz"() than Bergman's "The Seventh Seal." More than anything, I am closer to myself and, as such, I have never had clear criteria on the subject of death. That was one of the reasons why it attracted me: discovering what my own position is with regard to a reality that is as inevitable as it is unfathomable, a daily yet eternal occurrence which, like many other things about human nature, I have never quite accepted.

If I abide by the results of the script, death for me is an element of sexual excitement, with all that implies. A supreme act of vitality; clean, painful, amoral and closely linked to beauty and love. I'm not saying that death is only that - by no means. What I'm saying is that this is the possibility that attracts me most.

With this film, there are many things I want to express - many of them I can only sense. I really don't know where to start. Perhaps the best thing is to begin with the title:

MATADOR

After making my last movie and the difficulties I had with the credits and the title, which did not fit on the screen, I promised myself to come up with a short name for my new film. Although I might be viewed as naïve or pretentious, I was also after an international title, one that would not need translation no matter where it showed. In our language, there are not many such words; I had to choose between "Carmen", "Lola", "Generalísimo", "golpe", "flamenco", "guerrilla", "corrida" and MATADOR. I didn't hesitate in opting for the latter because, apart from fulfilling the required brevity and internationality "Matador" conceals the essence of the main story.

A "Matador" is someone who kills, and that applies to both leading characters; Diego Montes and María Cardenal. Although neither of them is a common murderer; they don't kill because they are crazy, because of money, hatred, an ideology or armed conflict, they kill for love and pleasure. For both of them, killing is the maximum expression of physical love.

With this movie, I intend to tell a sort of legend, utilizing and abstracting many elements from our culture.

I'd dare to formulate a theorem (similar to Pasolini's): "If one day you find a character whom you've only dared to dream about, you won't be able to turn your back on him. Something far more powerful than reason will push you towards him, without you caring if it is going to be a mortal encounter".

"What makes these two characters unique? What makes them outstandingly different from their environment?"

"Their need to love and kill at the same time. This turns them into myths."

He is a retired bullfighter because he had been severely gored early in his career.

She is a lawyer who imitates the way he kills.

After leaving the bullrings for good, he sets up a bullfighting school, but he has to go on killing because "giving up killing is like giving up living". She too likes killing, and she does it at the moment she physically gives herself over to others, imitating the bullfighter's way of killing.

However, they both do it on their own. They've never had an accomplice join them in their acts. While one shouldn't scorn the act of enjoying solitary pleasures, there are times when reciprocity is indispensible, like in the case of love.

"Matador" is an amoral, romantic story. The characters live only for love. Actually, that doesn't just apply to the leading characters. "Everybody loves someone" could be another title for the film. The bullfighter loves the female lawyer, but she puts up obstacles in the way; her self doubt, the doubt of someone who has dreamed too long about something then discovers that its fulfillment is close at hand. Eva, a young female model, is in love with the bullfighter; when she discovers his "hobby," she is prepared to sacrifice herself or reform him in order not to lose him. The police inspector is in love (although it might go unnoticed in the script because it isn't specified in the dialogues) with Ángel, Diego's pupil who, due to a terrible guilt complex, declares himself perpetrator of all the crimes that take place around him. Julia, the psychiatrist that treats him, is in turn in love with the police inspector and doesn't give up hope on re-conquering something she has never had. Then there is Berta, Ángel's mother, an intolerant woman from Opus Dei who loves God fanatically.

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In her delightful memoirs, Anita Loos says of her boss, Irving Thalberg, that amongst others there was an imposition that invariably kept turning up at the time of discussing a script: "The leading character must be in love with someone, if possible, with the leading female character". There was this film, I don't recall the title, in which this condition was difficult to fulfill by the female scriptwriter without undermining the narrow-minded morals of the period in which it was filmed. The leading characters were a brother and a sister. The brother couldn't be in love with his sister and there wasn't any other important character with whom he could fall in love. When Anita Loos explained her problem to Thalberg, the latter replied: "Well, in that case make him fall in love with himself." Anita therefore, sure enough, turned him into a narcissist. Irving Thalberg would have been delighted with this script; there is enough love in it to fill the needs of several movies, although, probably he would not have agreed with the tone of my movie. I want to do a romantic film, but I don't want it to be melodramatic at all, on the contrary, I want it to be very fierce. I intend to move the viewer with wild emotions.

Beauty has always been condemned to death (Ava Gardner almost always had to die in her films) and I'm not just referring to physical deterioration, which is a passive form of death. Beauty, love and passion are always exceptions because of their irrational nature that scheme against order. I wouldn't know exactly which is the hand of the executioner who applies the punishment, because there are many. No order, no ideology, has protected or simply admitted that which is beautiful or passionate, because both things are uncontrollable.

Like in all grand legends, "Matador" is marked by death, but not by doom. I refuse to allow my characters to be condemned…I rebel against that fate.

But, how can we flee doom to be the owners of our wishes, of the love that brings them about and of the beauty which produced such feelings?

The solution is for us to decide for ourselves about our own death, to snatch the scythe from destiny and become our own executioners and, more importantly, to feel infinite pleasure in doing so.

This is the case of my protagonists. By deciding on their own tragedy and turning it in their only source of pleasure, they mock fate and defeat its threats.

I have spoken about love and now I will talk about beauty, even if in the future when the movie is finished these words turn against me. Beauty, in all its different shapes & forms, is a key element in "Matador"…the beauty of the light, the characters, the music, set designs, the dialogue.

THE LIGHT. As an esthetic option, I had contemplated two alternatives: make a film about crime in which the blood splashed onto the viewer along the lines of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", or the contrary, an elegant and exquisite film where violence would be replaced by emotion and feelings. I opted for the latter, as a counterpoint to the "dreadfulness of the plot and to shake off my shoulders the eternal question "why am I only interested in shabby stuff?"

Ángel Luis Fernández will be in charge of illuminating my dreams and putting shadows on my nightmares. As reference points, I have resorted to the large melodramas of Douglas Sirk, the magical transparency of "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman", the disturbing stillness of Zurbarán, the aggressiveness of the primitive Trucolor (Duel in the Sun, especially) and I don't know how many other things.

The result probably won't resemble any of these films, and yet may resemble all of them. Because Ángel Luis is a young camera operator, gifted with extraordinary intuition, as he already proved in "Arrebato, Entre tinieblas or Ópera prima". In New York, Néstor Almendros asked me a lot about him after watching "Que he hecho yo..."

But Angel's skills would be of no use if we didn't have the adequate…

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SET DESIGNS. Almost all of them, apart from their realist meaning, are metaphorical places that not only represent space but also the spirit and emotions of the characters. Very large, with several zones of light, lively and dense colors, they represent a firmament through which the characters evolve as if they were celestial bodies, especially the two leading characters, who will always shine with their own light, independently from the environment. The sky itself of Madrid becomes an important backdrop with its spectacular clouds that affect, represent and frame the turbulence of one of the characters - Ángel, the victim of a monstrous and intolerant upbringing and a passionate admiration for the master matador.

Pin Morales and Román Arango, regular collaborators of Berlanga, on this occasion, are in charge of the set designs. All of the latter are most unusual and all of them located in Madrid, a city that provides locations that are far more surprising than what I thought.

THE PLAYERS. Judging by its five main players, "Matador" could also be called "The Strange Case of the Five Beauties". All of them are good-looking, and I'm not referring to banal and decorative beauty, but an extraordinary beauty that will stun and disturb the viewer..

Nacho Martínez is the bullfighter. Having lost ten kilos, dressed and advised by Cossío, he bears little resemblance to the character in a previous film where he played the role of the mute, good-natured brother of Tasio. Nacho possesses the gravity of an outstanding bullfighter. His face is ageless. Beyond some very deep wrinkles, there seems to hide the conscience of an inevitable tragedy, of pain that comes from vitality. His sobriety expresses everything. Has someone ever seen a bullfighter smile? I most certainly haven't.

Assumpta Serna is María Cardenal. She is cold and unfathomable, until she decides to talk; then her mouth is like that of an oven. María is made of transparent ice, but deep inside her there is a genuine fire. We have clad her in black which accentuates the angles of her face. She resembles a mixture between Anouk Aimée and Fanny Ardant. One always senses her great capacity to dive into the forbidden, but this time she is going to prove that she can also express a limitless passion and that her seeming emotional distance is just a mask she hides behind while she waits.

Eusebio Poncela plays the role of police inspector. The aura of toughness, mystery, ambiguity and sarcasm that has settled around Eusebio over the last twenty years fits him like a glove in this role. He is more a criminologist than a policeman; he is not interested in doing justice for he has no morals. He is just interested in knowing if someone "has done something wrong" and "how they did it". Sober, elegant, skeptical, Eusebio's image as a police inspector is going to be very different from that of the usual cop. From the very start, he is fascinated by the beauty and defenselessness of the presumably guilty Ángel. All his investigations seem to be more geared towards proving his innocence than his guilt. He never talks about himself, but the spectator will find out certain things from "what he looks at" and "how he looks at it." Uncomfortable and slippery, I expect Poncela, whose acting career is short though peculiar and brilliant, tol play this role with the same skill he has shown in other films.

Eva Cobo and Antonio Banderas play the roles of the young couple. Although only 18 years old, Eva has the strength and character of the great melodramatic heroines of the 1940s. She plays the role of a woman in love prepared to fight tooth and nail for her man, to the extent of lying to herself when she finds out he is a murderer, and with the naïve self-confidence that her love will redeem him. But Diego isn't like the other characters, even if she denies the evidence. He belongs to another species, the species of María Cardenal.

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Antonio Banderas is Ángel, Diego's pupil, someone who seeks some sort of punishment in bullfighting. His admiration for his master and a terrible guilt complex makes him feel and declare himself guilty of everything. Banderas is an expert artist, despite the fact that he is only twenty-odd years old. He is fresh, kindhearted and intense. With parts in two other films: "Réquiem por un campesino" and "La corte de Faraón", this is going to be his year. This is his most complicated role yet, but, with an actor like him, I'm on safe ground.

Apart from these five "beauties", I am also working with three women who are indispensible: Julieta Serrano, Carmen Maura and Chus Lampreave.

Working with them has been for me not just a privilege but a continuous emotion. The three are born actresses. They are exceptionally gifted. Each has a totally personal technique and they are so generous that I'll never be grateful enough to them. Their mere presence makes the characters whose role they play grow in stature.

I admit that I am a fan of the three of them and it is a known fact that fans have no restraint when they talk about their idols. At any rate, one only needs to glance briefly at their work to see that I'm not exaggerating.

But there are many other people collaborating in "Matador". Jesús Ferrero, the author of "Belver-Yin", has helped me with the script. Bernardo Bonezzi, like in the movie "Qué he hecho yo...", will be in charge of the music. A troop of new Spanish costume designers -all of them big shots in their trade - will be in charge of dressing the characters (Francis Montesinos will take care of Eva Cobo, Angeles Boada will dress Assumpta Serna, Antonio Alvarado will look after Eusebio Poncela, etc.). The jewelry has been designed by a young genius called Chus Burés.

I feel as if I haven't really said anything about the film itself. It is difficult as well as boring to express everything one feels for a movie a few days before the shooting. The most important thing about the cinema is to make films. That is what my adventure is all about.

It's been a long time since I wanted to do "Matador". I now discover that it is indispensible for me to do it and I don't know why. 

I thank God and Andrés Vicente Gómez for fulfilling my wishes. I am also most grateful to my brother Tinín (the Almodóvar saga continues), to Rafael Monleón (my right-hand man), to Cossío (a refined costume designer and a very dear friend), to Esther García, a woman who proves that sexy things are not incompatible with production, Marisa Ibarra (as silent as the

Gioconda, also, nothing escapes her), to Eusebio Graciani (loyal, helpful, efficient, insatiable worker), Miguel Gómez, etc., etc.

PEDRO ALMODÓVAR (1986).