Live Flesh
Almodóvar’s mature and assured feature Live Flesh explores the paradoxes of passion, desire, and love in a stylistic thriller grounded in Spanish politics. Cop David (Javier Bardem) is shot and paralyzed when his partner Sancho botches an encounter with a quarreling couple. The young man, Victor, ends up in jail, while David ends up marrying the young woman Elena, who carries the guilt of his disability. Things go awry when Victor is released four years later.

DIRECTOR: Pedro Almodóvar. WRITTEN BY: Pedro Almodóvar. CAST: Javier Bardem, Francesca Neri, Liberto Rabal, Angela Molina. 1997. 103 min. Spain/France. Color. Spanish. 35mm.

Kika
At the time cited as his most controversial film, Kika follows the titular character (the marvelous Verónica Forqué), a beautician who is such a charming chatterbox she is (literally) able to raise the dead. When she marries the much younger son of her lover, the fates intervene to upend their happiness. Reflecting on sexual violence, the media, and the paradoxes of desire, Kika features Almodóvar regulars Victoria Abril and Rossy de Palma.

DIRECTOR: Pedro Almodóvar. WRITTEN BY: Pedro Almodóvar. CAST: Peter Coyote, Verónica Forqué, Victoria Abril, Rossy de Palma. 1993. 114 min. Spain/France. Color. Spanish. 35mm. Print courtesy of the Sundance Institute Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Viewer discretion is strongly advised.

All film screenings in the Pedro Almodóvar series are available here. 

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.