Crashing through decades of Franco-era repression in early '80s Spain, auteur Pedro Almodóvar single-handedly ushered in a new wave of liberation and expression with such irreverent and outrageous films as LAW OF DESIRE, MATADOR and WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. The iconoclastic Spaniard may have made his reputation as an enfant terrible, but his contributions to world cinema - 15 features over 25 years; Oscar, Golden Globe, Goya, Donatello, and César awards - place him in the category of grand master. His ironic hyperbolic scenarios full of risqué sexual behavior, riotous color, flamboyant fashions and expressionistic sets continue to challenge audiences and surprise skeptics with their ever-evolving complexity and maturity. As the celebrated director unveils his searing new masterpiece VOLVER, AFI presents a retrospective of his most recent work. All films are in Spanish with English subtitles.

Films include: TALK TO HER, WOMEN ON THE VERGE, THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET, LIVE FLESH, LAW OF DESIRE, MATADOR, and BAD EDUCATION.

This is a "no pass" engagement.

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
[Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios]

A landmark film for Almodóvar, a definitive film of the 1980s, and a worldwide hit. Dumped by her cad lover, soap actress Carmen Maura considers suicide by barbituate-laced gazpacho. But she's distracted first by her ditsy friend Maria Barranco, who has recently discovered her boyfriend’s a terrorist, then by her ex-lover's son Antonio Banderas, who wants to sublease the apartment, then his crazy mom Julieta Serrano, just out of the asylum and ready for revenge, not to mention finding the right pair of shoes to confront her ex in. Five Goyas, including Best Film, and Audience Award, Toronto Film Festival.

DIR/SCR/PROD Pedro Almodóvar. Spain, 1988, color, 98 min. In Spanish with English subtitles.

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER
[Todo sobre mi madre]

In Almodóvar's Oscar-winning homage to wome - and to all men who want to become women - single mother Cecilia Roth watches her only son die on his 17th birthday while racing to get a stage actress's autograph. As Roth embarks on a quest to find the boy’s transsexual father, she befriends a richly diverse assortment of women, including a transvestite, a pregnant nun (Penelope Cruz) and the actress her son died pursuing.

DIR/SCR Pedro Almodóvar; PROD Agustín Almodóvar. Spain/France, 1999, color, 101 min. RATED R

TALK TO HER
[Habla con ella]

Two men forge a relationship as they use the intricacies of the spoken word - however improbably - to communicate with the comatose women they love. Nurse Javier Camara talks to felled ballerina Leonor Watling and journalist Dario Grandinetti to gored bullfighter Rosario Flores, with the stories of all four lives crisscrossing past and present throughout. "At the end, we are undeniably touched" - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times.

DIR/SCR Pedro Almodóvar; Spain, 2002, color, 112 min. RATED R

THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET
[La Flor de Mi Secreto]

In the midst of creative and marital doldrums best-selling romantic novelist Marisa Paredes drops her pseudonym to accept a job as a newspaper book critic whose first assignment is an exposé of her novelist alter ego - providing fertile ground for an emotional roller coaster ride through the reality of her life.

DIR/SCR Pedro Almodóvar; PROD Esther García. Spain/France, 1995, color, 103 min. RATED R

LIVE FLESH
[Carne tremula]

Almodóvar's noirish tale of mad love, jealousy and revenge, adapted from a Ruth Rendell thriller, opens with prostitute Penelope Cruz giving birth (impressively) to a baby boy aboard a Madrid bus on Christmas, 1970. Years later, her son Liberto Rabal watches ex-cop, now wheelchair-bound basketball star Javier Bardem (THE SEA INSIDE), on TV - from a jail rec room - and plots his revenge against the man who stole his junkie girlfriend. All that, and it's a parable of Spain's emergence from the Franco era, too.

DIR/SCR Pedro Almodóvar; SCR Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Ray Lorgia, based on the novella by Ruth Rendell; PROD Esther Garcia; France/Spain, 1997, color, 103 min. RATED R

LAW OF DESIRE
[La ley del deseo]

In this surreal psycho-thriller, Antonio Banderas is driven to extremes of passion after viewing one of soft-core auteur Eusebio Poncelas's films. Banderas begins an affair with Poncelas, then murders her boyfriend out of jealousy. Almodóvar regular Carmen Maura plays Poncelas's transsexual sister, whose ex-lover's daughter is kidnapped by Banderas to ransom the director into one last dread-filled assignation. A pitch-black, barking mad, but surprisingly moving melodrama from the Almodóvar’s enfant terrible years.

DIR/SCR/PROD Pedro Almodóvar; PROD Agustín Almodóvar. Spain, 1987, color, 102 min. RATED R

BAD EDUCATION
[La mala educación]

Almodóvar's most assured and masterful work - a thriller on par with Hitchcock. Struggling actor Gael Garcia Bernal shows up at filmmaker Fele Martinez's office pushing a screenplay that harkens back to their youthful romance at Catholic school, and the jealous priest (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) who came between them. Film-within-a-film segments portray the script, and as the identities of actor and role blur - and the truth of what really happened comes to light - events take darker and deadlier turns.

DIR/SCR/PROD Pedro Almodóvar; PROD Esther García, Agustín. Spain, 2004, color, 106 min. RATED R

MATADOR

Retired bullfighter Diego Montes turns from killing bulls to killing girls. Lawyer María Cardenal dispatches her sexual partners with equal torero finesse, plunging a stiletto into their napes. In this wacky, wry and delightfully extravagant film, Almodóvar skillfully endows stock Spanish themes with an utterly modern treatment.

DIR/SCR Pedro Almodóvar; SCR Jesús Ferrero; PROD Andrés Vicente Gómez. Spain, 1986, color, 110 min. RATED NC-17