After winning the 2003 Oscar for Best Original screenplay, everyone thought Almodóvar was moving to English-language filmmaking with an adaptation of Pete Dexter’s novel The Paperboy. Instead, the first Spanish film ever to open the Cannes Film Festival is the director’s most personal work yet.
Two boys, Ignacio (Bernal) and Enrique (Martínez), know love, cinema and fear in a church school in the early 60s. Father Manolo (Giménez-Cacho), the headmaster and their literature teacher, is witness to and part of these discoveries. The three meet again, at the end of the 70s and in 1980. The reunion will mark the life and death of one of them.
Almodóvar returns to his roots. Tracing a direct line from THE LAW OF DESIRE, he includes transsexuals, La movida madrileña, and child abuse, all cloaked in the darkness of a noir. Martínez sports a sexy new bod, Gael is drop-dead-gorgeous in drag, and Cámara looks set to upstage Antonia San Juan as the latest Almodóvar scene-stealer.