Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almod?var

Paul Julian Smith is a professor at the City University of New York. His previous books include Vision Machines: Cinema, Literature and Sexuality in Spain and Cuba, 1983-1993 and The Moderns: Time, Space and Subjectivity in Contemporary Spanish Culture.

This text examines the work of Pedro Almodovar, the Spanish director whose nine features to date include the comedy, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), the S & M melodrama, Tie me up! Tie me down! (1990) and the family romance, High Heels (1991). This study argues not only that Almodovar is a highly skilled manipulator of cinematic form, but also that his films raise important questions—of gender, nationality and sexuality—which demand a serious response from their audience. Desire Unlimited offers analyses derived from recent feminist, gay and postmodern theory.