ArticleAt 56, Pedro Almodóvar is many things: a Spaniard; a gay man; a connoisseur of the absurd; a prolific writer and director; and one of the few auteurs still standing. But most of all, Pedro Almodóvar is a man who loves women. He loves women of all ages and temperaments and in every shape and size; he loves the very concept of womanhood.
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"I don't know another filmmaker who so dramatizes sexual mobility," says Marsha Kinder, a professor of cinema, comparative literature and Spanish at the University of Southern California and a longtime Almodóvar scholar. "In his films, being a woman isn't determined biologically, but culturally. It means identifying with a set of characteristics that anyone can choose. To borrow from (gender theorist) Judith Butler here, for the women in his films -- whether they're male, female or transsexual -- gender is a performance."
Performance is perhaps an understatement. Almodóvar's women take gender between their teeth and chew it to a pulp.
