Almodóvar's "caprice" arrives in Venice

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and British actress Tilda Swinton, upon their arrival at the screening of 'La voz Humana' on the second day of the Venice film festival, this Thursday.ALBERTO PIZZOLI / AFP

Pedro Almodóvar has premiered this Thursday in Venice his first 'project in English,

, a medium-length film inspired by a theatrical text by Jean Cocteau and starring Tilda Swinton.

"At this time when everyone dreams of shooting series, I dreamed of a short film," Almodóvar said about this 30-minute film, one of the first to be filmed in this period of new normality.

The director thus materializes one of his dreams: to adapt the monologue that Cocteau premiered in Paris in 1930, starring a woman who talks for the last time with her lover, who has abandoned her.

Later, actresses such as Ingrid Bergman, Simone Signoret or Anna Magnani recited the text, in a first film adaptation,

, which Rossellini filmed in 1948. Almodóvar and Swinton now add their names to that exquisite lineage with a long-awaited project on the Venetian Lido, where big names are rare.

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Less mentioned than Douglas Sirk, RW Fassbinder or Tennessee Williams in his list of maximum influences, Cocteau is another matrix in Almodovar cinema.

The director already introduced a fragment of that text in

, where it was played by the actress played by Carmen Maura.

His next film,

, was also born as a "long and experimental" adaptation of that monologue, before taking another path.

"The situation of that abandoned woman, alone and on the verge of madness, together with a dog with whom she is grieving and a lot of packed suitcases, is a dramatic situation that has always stimulated me," acknowledged Almodóvar, who confessed that he also it's up to him personally.

“I have also experienced this situation.

I have also waited in vain ”.

The adaptation moves away from the dustiest part of the text to reinvent it in the background and in the form.

The conversation takes place by wireless headset and its protagonist is a current woman.

“In the original there is too much submission.

I wanted to turn it into an act of revenge, "said the director, who eliminated much of the text and rewrote what was left.

"Not for correcting a classic, but for digesting it in a way that is absolutely mine," added Almodóvar.

He also proposed to Swinton that he make some changes.

"My English is not as good as yours," he quipped.

The British actress, who yesterday received an honorary Golden Lion from the Mostra, defined her relationship with Almodóvar as “a new love” and considered it the fruit of the prayers of “a Benedictine monk friend”, who had been convinced for years that they would work together.

“It seemed ridiculous to me, because I am not Spanish nor do I speak Spanish.

But we share the language of cinema, "he said.

Miriñaques and Diazepam

With

, Almodóvar manages to break the curse that surrounded his attempts to film in other languages.

In the 1990s, he wanted to shoot a mix of

and

with Gerard Depardieu as Blanche DuBois and Juliette Binoche as Stella.

Then there was the aborted adaptation of the novel

, by Pete Dexter (which ended up taking Lee Daniels to the movies), and the Alice Munro short story, which would be born as an English project and with Meryl Streep as the protagonist before become

.

For this premiere, the director has designed lavish outlines.

In the opening seconds of

, Swinton walks around in a Balenciaga dress with a monumental crinoline, as if she were an alien girl.

Products from brands such as Chanel and Loewe sneak into the frames, and the mythical bottle of perfume Number 5 coexists in the bathroom with a bottle of Diazepam.

A copy of

, by Paul Thomas Anderson, and a handful of books by Munro herself, Hanya Yanagihara or Lucia Berlin - in February it was announced that Almodóvar would adapt

- are also part of the props for a dining room presided over by

, the mysterious painting of

Artemisia Gentileschi.

In this new project, Almodóvar takes his usual artifice to the last consequences, in the dramaturgical as well as in the staging.

The short takes place in a Brechtian setting: Swinton wanders between the floor where his character lives and the set where that colorful apartment was built, and which, judging by the facade of the

Costa Buena

restaurant

and its giant lobster, is located in Fuenlabrada (Madrid).

is a minor work in his filmography, a luxurious diversion and a bombastic exercise in style alongside a superlative Swinton who has never looked so much like Buster Keaton.

In the end, the director slightly alters Cocteau's plans to stage a purification: to move on, you have to let the oldest parts of yourself die.

An idea that coincides with a moment of phase change in Almodóvar's cinema, ready to enter a period of greater “containment”, of which

and

seem the first examples.

This medium-length film, of a baroque style that, at times, “borders on the

”, is the last fireworks before a definitive change of phase.

Two new shorts

That restraint will also go through the footage.

After

, Almodovar has written two other short pieces: one of 45 minutes and the other of about 20. “The first is a very particular western, entitled

, like Amália Rodrigues's fado.

And the second, a dystopia about a world without cinemas ”, he announced in Venice about these theatrical works, which will take place in a unique setting.

"It's better for my back," said the director, only half jokingly.

The second of these projects responds to one of his biggest concerns: the fragile situation of the theaters, which the pandemic could finish off.

“Confinement has made us see the house as a place of seclusion, where we can work, shop, find love and ask for food.

We can do absolutely everything in a sedentary way.

That seems dangerous to me, ”he said.

“I propose, in contrast to that, the cinema.

Going to the cinema is starting an adventure, choosing a movie and laughing, terrifying and crying with strangers.

On a human level, it seems to me an essential experience ”, said Almodóvar.

"My greatest illusion is to continue alive and making movies."