Beauty Break: Almodóvar's Eye Candy
Friday, October 25, 2019 at 10:30PM by Cláudio Alves
César Vicente in PAIN & GLORY (2019).
Before Martin Scorsese ignited the internet's fury with his comments about the MCU, another master filmmaker had already made headlines with less than complimentary opinions on the matter. Back in April, before he took his glorious Pain & Glory to Cannes, Pedro Almodóvar criticized superhero movies for having no sexuality. According to the Spanish auteur, they are neutered.
When compared against his passionate filmography they are piteously sexless indeed. But so are most movies. Few filmmakers have explored the many permutations of desire as thoroughly as Almodóvar has, usually with a patina of irreverent queerness. From killers in skimpy white briefs to ballets of bulges and sculpted asses, his camera is always ready to lick an actor's body and crystalize them into divinities of wantonness.
You're invited to peruse the director's gallery of beautiful men, starting at the dawn of his career and ending with Pain & Glory's first bloom of desire. Come see Almodóvar's NSFW eye candy…
Antonio Banderas and Imanol Arias have a steamy encounter in LABYRINTH OF PASSION (1982).
Luis Hostalot is Carmen Maura's temptation in WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? (1984).
;)
In MATADOR (1986), a film where sex and death are always hand-in-hand, Antonio Banderas is breathtakingly beautiful.
LAW OF DESIRE (1987) starts with what is probably the most erotic opening scene in all of cinema. Nothing could be more appropriate for Almodóvar's horniest masterpiece.
It also features many visions of Banderas as a diabolically delectable murderer.
TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! (1989) is a collection of peculiar sights where kinkiness and absurdity intersect.
THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET (1995) is one of my favorite Almodóvar's and there's even some eye candy to add flavor to the sweet melodrama.
Liberto Rabal is turned into a monument of lust in LIVE FLESH (1997), the perfect subject for Almodóvar's queer gaze.
After LAW OF DESIRE, BAD EDUCATION (2004) is Almodóvar's sexiest work. Few things can beat the allure of Gael García Bernal getting out of a pool in wet briefs.
Daniel Grao is a beautiful lover in Almodóvar's underrated JULIETA (2016).
And we'll end with the first desire, PAIN & GLORY's best scene which is both sensuous and funny, touching and gorgeous.
Who’s the sexiest of them all?
Reader Comments (23)
What are their rates? Takes one to know one. I give Pedro a lot of credit as a cinema icon.
Watching Gael Garcia Bernal coming out of that pool in a movie theater in high school was one of the most intensely erotic movie experiences I had experienced at that time and as a result the scene still holds a special place in my heart.
That scene from Pain and Glory is indeed the best one in the film.
Spain Is a Fascist State
I’m sweating from all of this spice.
Bono is completely right. But probably for the wrong reasons.
On the subject... Almodovar eye is not mine. He has a flavor for younger, skinnier, I have a taste for hairy, lumberjack/trucker guys, not necesarily fat, but certainly not slim. Pedro seems more interested in boyish, I am more interested in mature (30+) men...
They’re not all twinks. And lots of them are pretty hairy.
Damn... a lot of Almodovar's films are indeed sexy. I can't believe you didn't include the dance number in I'm So Excited. It's sexy as hell.
In "Talk to Her" there's that amazing musical scene (Caetano Veloso singing "Cucurucucu") that starts with a gorgeous shot of a man swimming and then popping his head up from the pool. He doesn't show up anywhere else in the film -- pure eye candy. But it actually does something for the scene and the film. Plus he's hunky.
(On a side note, I rewatched Talk to Her recently and... the elements I didn't like back then are even more glaring in our #MeToo moment. There's just so little female agency in a film that's about such a terrible violation of women. I get that it's about lots more, but it's hard to look past that, especially since it came between "All About My Mother" and "Volver" -- two of my very favorite movies.)
Miguel Ángel Silvestre in I’m So Excited.
So handsome, so sexy. I wish Almodóvar would cast him agin.
Almodovar has a great eye for male beauty.
The intentionally too long shot of Banderas-Salvador lying in bed, in pain (Pain and Glory),with his bulging pants on the foreground is a nice reminder (closure?) of the lust with which Almodóvar has always looked at Banderas. You can't get more self-referential than that, you get that shot of your male muse and playing yourself.
That opening scene in Law of Desire males remember how incredibly exciting was too see that in a movie theatre.
@RV, it is even worse in ‘Kika’ where rape is played for laughs, with a mambo on the soundtrack no less. This kind of lack of tact on such matters, to say the least, goes back as far as to ‘Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown’ , what with Rossy de Palma’s character dreaming about being fucked in her state of unconsciousness, ( a dubious gag re-used for reals this time in the dreadful ‘Los Amantes Pasajeros’) and to ‘Matador’, where, again, rape, in this case an attempt of and its report, are played for comedy at a police station...and i love Almodovar but facts are facts...there is also some sexually charged violence against both the first boyfriend of Eusebio Poncela and the transexual character played by la Maura in ‘Law of Desire’ , not to mention the continuos feeling of sexual threat in ‘Carne Trémula ‘ , actually someone with the time interest and psychological knowledge could write an essay about this instead of the over repetitive analysis of the use of colours in his work.
I’m seeing PAIN & GLORY again this evening - this time with a Q&A with Pedro and Antonio at the Cinerama Dome! Marry Me, Antonio!
Law of Desire is masterful in its use of Antonio in only briefs and the shoutouts to Duel In the Sun. Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck brought the eroticism.
Spain, release all political prisoners!
@RV
Yeah, I'm kinda of paranoid to rewatch Talk to Her for that reason. Though I'm not as big a fan of Volver as the rest of the world (I was kinda happy it missed on the foreign film nomination, though I was rooting more against Pan's Labyrinth that year).
Jane Fonda accepted her BAFTA award while getting arrested and there's still no post about it!
Oh well - political correctness has hit this blog once again
The opening scene in "Law of Desire" is one of the most arousing moments in cinema.
RV - you know that guy swimming just before Caetano sings in Talk to Her is Almodovar's longtime boyfriend Fernando Iglesias. They've just celebrated 20 years together.
And he obviously has type
The thing Almodóvar gets about sexuality is how common it is. As staged and posed as it may seem, scenes like the justly erotic opening of Law of Desire and the "first desire" from Pain & Glory become erotic and sensual precisely because they're so banal and ordinary.
That "first desire" is one of the few times cinema has made me FEEL desire, true desire, which is, as Almodóvar knows, something we can find in an improvised wash basin, a rumpled bedsheet, or even a momentary caress.
He is the master for a reason.
I agree with Manny- specially when it comes to gay sexuality Almodovar is a master