Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction: The Skin He Lives In 1
Marvin D’Lugo and Kathleen M. Vernon

Part I Bio-Filmography 19

1 Almodóvar’s Self-Fashioning: The Economics and Aesthetics of Deconstructive Autobiography 21
Paul Julian Smith

2 Creative Beginnings in Almodóvar’s Work 39
Francisco A. Zurian

3 Almodóvar and Hitchcock: A Sorcerer’s Apprenticeship 59
Dona Kercher

4 A Life, Imagined and Otherwise: The Limits and Uses of Autobiography in Almodóvar’s Films 88
Alberto Mira

Part II Spanish Contexts 105

5 El Deseo’s “Itinerary”: Almodóvar and the Spanish Film Industry 107
Marina Díaz López

6 Almodóvar and Spanish Patterns of Film Reception 129
Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernández Labayen

7 Memory, Politics, and the Post-Transition in Almodóvar’s Cinema 153
Juan Carlos Ibáñez

8 The Ethics of Oblivion: Personal, National, and Cultural Memories in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar 176
Adrián Pérez Melgosa

Part III At the Limits of Gender 201

9 Our Rapists, Ourselves: Women and the Staging of Rape in the Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar 203
Leora Lev

10 Paternity and Pathogens: Mourning Men and the Crises of Masculinity in Todo Sobre Mi Madre and Hable Con Ella 225
Dean Allbritton

11 Domesticating Violence in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar 244
Noelia Saenz

12 La piel que habito: A Story of Imposed Gender and the Struggle for Identity 262
Francisco A. Zurian

Part IV Re-readings 279

13 Re-envoicements and Reverberations in Almodóvar’s Macro-Melodrama 281
Marsha Kinder

14 The Flower of His Secret: Carne trémula and the Mise en Scène of Desire 304
Celestino Deleyto

15 Scratching the Past on the Surface of the Skin: Embodied Intersubjectivity, Prosthetic Memory, and Witnessing in Almodóvar’s La mala educación 322
Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla

16 Almodóvar’s Stolen Images 345
Javier Herrera

Part V Global Almodóvar 365

17 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: From Madrid (1988) to New York (2010) 367
Isolina Ballesteros

18 Almodóvar’s Global Musical Marketplace 387
Kathleen M. Vernon

19 Almodóvar and Latin America: The Making of a Transnational Aesthetic in Volver 412
Marvin D’Lugo

20 Is there a French Almodóvar? 432
Jean-Claude Seguin

21 Almodóvar in Asia: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and LGBT Film Culture 453
E. K. Tan

Part VI Art and Commerce 469

22 To the Health of the Author: Art Direction in Los abrazos rotos 471
John D. Sanderson

23 Making Spain Fashionable: Fashion and Design in Pedro Almodóvar’s Cinema 495
Gerard Dapena

24 Almodóvar, Cyberfandom, and Participatory Culture 524
Vicente Rodríguez Ortega

Index 551

About the Author

Marvin D'Lugo is Professor of Spanish and AdjunctProfessor of Screen Studies at Clark University, Massachusettswhere he teaches courses on Spanish and Latin-American cinema. Hehas published a number of books including PedroAlmodovar (2006) in the University of IllinoisPress Contemporary Film Directors series. Kathleen M. Vernon is Associate Professor of HispanicLanguages and Literatures at the State University of New York atStony Brook. She is author and editor of numerous studies onSpanish cinema and culture including Post-Franco, Postmodern:The Films of Pedro Almodovar (1995).

Reviews

Well researched and clearly organized, the volume boastsa helpful scholarly apparatus. Almodovar scholars will wantto keep this companion handy, and all advanced students of filmwill appreciate it. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduatestudents, researchers, faculty. (Choice, 1December 2013)