Read + Write + Report
Home | Start a blog | About Orble | FAQ | Sites | Writers | Advertise | My Orble | Login
 
"It's as much fun to scare as to be scared." --- Vincent Price

Horrorphile - August 2008

Matador

August 18th 2008 04:24
Matador movie poster
“When two heavenly bodies meet their light seems to go out, but in their brief convergence they acquire a new luminosity, black and ardent.”

Matador (1986) is my favourite Pedro Almodóvar film. It is also his most stylised in terms of thematic content: sex and death. It’s a perverse comedy (like many of his movies), yet it’s his darkest in tone. A maimed ex-matador and an obsessive lawyer become fatally embroiled in a death wish; a pas de deux, the ultimate orgasm – au petite mort.

I first saw Matador at the Wellington Film Festival in 1987. In the same festival was Almodovar’s Law of Desire (shot back-to-back with Matador), a film he considers a reflection, two sides of the same coin. Whereas Law of Desire deals with the abstract concept of desire, but in a realist way, Matador deals with the concrete element of sexuality, but in a metaphorical, abstract way. Both themes are linked in both movies, yet Matador combines them in a fascinating and fantastic fashion.
Matador Assumpta Serna
Assumpta Serna as Maria, straddling her dark desire
Matador Antonio Banderas
Antonio Banderas as Angel
Diego (Nacho Martinez) teaches bullfighting in the courtyard of his wealthy Madrid home. He also masturbates to horror/snuff movies (Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace features briefly). He is fixated on the allure of killing. But something is missing. One of his students, Angel (Antonio Banderas), idolizes him, but he is a troubled individual. He has a fragile psyche (due to a zealously religious mother; superb performance from Julietta Serrano), but is gifted with a form of clairvoyance. Angel’s neighbour is Eva (Eva Cobo), a model, and Diego’s girlfriend. Whilst talking with Diego after class Angel realises he needs to be more proactive with women; Diego has told him he must approach women like a torero approaches a bull.
Matador Nacho Martinez and Assumpta Serna
Nacho Martinez as Diego and Maria (adjusting her lethal hairpin)
Although Matador isn’t specifically about bullfighting, it treats male/female interaction like a corrida. It inverses the masculine and feminine relationships and characterisations; Diego is like a wounded ballerina, one who danced and teased the bull – all glamour and allure - and was crippled, whilst Maria (sumptuous Assumpta Serna), the strutting lawyer, is in stark contrast; grabbing the bull by the horns, she seduces men, fucks them and kills as they climax, thus heightening her own orgasm. She penetrates them like a torero, thrusting her large hairpin down deep between their shoulder blades.
Matador Eva Cobo, Pedro Almodovar and Chus Lampreave
Eva (Eva Cobo) with mama (Chus Lampreave) and Almodovar in a cameo
After Angel attempts to rape Eva and fails pathetically (black humour bordering on slapstick), he gives himself up to police, and then blindly confesses to a series of prostitute murders that have eluded the police commissioner del Valle (Eusebio Poncela). Maria is assigned to defend Angel, which piques her interest further when she discovers his tutor is the legendary Diego, a man who fuels an ardour deep within her something chronic. Later the two morbid creatures’ paths cross in a cinema auditorium (where lurid Western Duel in the Sun is playing), and their fate is sealed. Destiny lies in a fatal union of flesh and blood.

Matador Assumpta Serna
Maria threatens Diego with suicide
The sexuality in Matador, especially for its time, is very provocative. There's an erotic edge that rears its head in certain scenes, in particular when Maria mounts a doomed stranger and rides him beyond the pale; although oddly the movie favours the explicit nudity of the women more so than the men (European films usually never shy from the display of male full frontal nudity, perhaps Almodóvar was keen for a wide American and UK release, the irony being the MPAA eventually slapped an NC-17 on it, probably also due to the movie's opening sequence of onanism to graphic violence).
Matador Nacho Martinez and Eva Cobo
Diego overwhelms a distraught and desperate Eva at his house
As in all of Almodóvar’s films there is a celebration of colour and design; scarlet and vermillion feature prominently, obviously as representation of blood, but also rage and passion. While not a savage film, Matador does possess an underlying aggression, yet Almodóvar manipulates this harshness with stylistic bravado, courting and caressing the mise-en-scene with the bold and unfettered hand of a sculptor. Critics will argue his latter movies are more accomplished, but there is originality and fervour pulsing through Matador that one doesn’t find in his later work. Sensual and exquisite images rub up against a wry starkness often with just a hint of atmospheric music.

Matador Assumpta Serna and Nacho Martinez
Ai no corrida
Matador is a fable, a macabre conceit realised as a sexually-charged descent into a desperate obsession. It’s a fantasy-tragedy pierced through the heart with an absurdist stiletto; as mysterious and moody as the solar eclipse which casts a crimson glow over the intertwined tableaux at movie’s end.


Here's a strangely elusive, but still evocative, Dutch trailer:


Here's the scene with Eva and her mother and Almodovar's cameo:

64
Vote
Shared on

   
Subscribe to this blog 


Just this blog This blog and DailyOrble (recommended)

   

   

   

[ Link ]
Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews
Related Posts:

Comments
3 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Anonymous

August 18th 2008 06:59
Bravo!

Comment by Cibbuano

August 19th 2008 00:28


20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
love Ai no corrida....


...Almodovar likes to use bullfighting in his movie, eh? Perhaps he grew up with it?

This looks terrific... I'm a big fan of his movies, which may be artificial, but are glorious depictions of lust and desire...

Comment by Bryn

August 19th 2008 05:22


Horrorphile
Cibby, then go no further than Matador for lust and desire. My other fave of his is Live Flesh, also superb in its depiction of lust and desire.
Have you seen Bigas Luna's Jamon Jamon?

Add A Comment

To create a fully formatted comment please click here.


CLICK HERE TO LOGIN | CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Name or Orble Tag
Home Page (optional)
Comments
Bold Italic Underline Strikethrough Separator Left Center Right Separator Quote Insert Link Insert Email
Notify me of replies
Notify extra people about this comment
Is this a private comment?
List the Email Addresses or Orble Tags of the people you would like to be notified about this comment


One per line max of 30

List the Email Addresses or Orble Tags of the people you would like to be notified about this private comment thread. Only the people in this list will be able to see or reply to your comment.


One per line max of 30

Your Name
(for the email going out to the above list, it can be different to your Orble Tag)
Your Email Address
(optional)
(required for reply notification)
Submit
More Posts
November 2008
2 Posts
October 2008
21 Posts
September 2008
19 Posts
Older Posts
492 Posts dating from August 2006
Email Subscription
Receive e-mail notifications of new posts on this blog:
0
[ View Blog Summary ] [ Create A New Post ] [ Add A Comment ]
Moderated by Bryn
Copyright © 2006 2007 2008 On Topic Media PTY LTD. All Rights Reserved. Design by Vimu.com.
On Topic Media ZPages: Sydney |  Melbourne |  Brisbane |  London |  Birmingham |  Leeds     [ Advertise ] [ Contact Us ] [ Privacy Policy ]