Thus emerged the legendary Movida, which was a belated Spanish answer to European new wave movements that were not only limited to film but also happened in other areas of art such as design, music, literature and architecture…



Even though Dictator Franco turned Spain into a sinking State governed by fear and opposed to any kind of creative freedom, eventually his lifelong mandate came to an end. After his tyranny ended it was necessary to harness all of the pent-up energy and bring to the surface all the taboo topics that used to be regarded as “inappropriate” because the dictator had banned any form of creative freedom. After long years of darkness the Spanish people craved humor. Thus emerged the legendary Movida, which was a belated Spanish answer to European new wave movements and that were not only limited to film but also happened in other areas of art such as design, music, literature and architecture. The humor promoted by its guru Pedro Almodovar was arrogant and offensive, morbid and kitschy, chaotic and dirty and above all subversive and piquant as the spiciest gazpacho. This humor owes a lot to the Spanish surrealist tradition. Franco’s darkness was replaced by Almodovar’s flashy wallpapers and shirts blue as the sky that we can see from the terrace in his film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.


Thus we begin this program with two quintessential Almodovars and the unavoidable Carmen Maura. In What Have I Done To Deserve This? Maura is a typical Spanish housewife who dreams of sex with an endowed man. In Dark Habits is a nun who wrestles a tiger. Almodovar’s humor is a surprising mixture of melodrama and twisted farce spiced with catholic kitsch that leaves enough space for religious ecstasy on LSD, the forging of Hitler’s diary and murder by hog bones. Maybe Almodovar’s heroines really are “ugly”, like his muse Rossy de Palma who has the face of Picasso’s cubist portraits (later this farcical distancing from the classic Hollywood idea of beauty was to be recycled by Alex de la Iglesia in Ševcu with the character of Ugly Lourdes). However, Almodovar makes his heroine think and not simply do what is expected of her. In Almodovar’s comedies the psychological state of the protagonists always corresponds with the narrative tones. And narration tries to achieve a certain balance, both physical and moral.


With the multicultural colors of Corbacho’s Tapas, a sort of a brighter variation on Iglesia’s De bares, the populist current of Spanish humor declares the clinical death of machismo, even though part of the soccer team from Serrano’s slapstick comedy Dias de futbol, dressed in yellow just like soccer players in the Croatian film Ajmo žuti, maybe has earned the red card because they sometimes use cheap moronic jokes. The original title (Crimen ferpecto) of Iglesia’s film Ferpect Crime is actually a playful homage to Hitchcock’s classic Dial M for Murder known in Spain under the title Crimen perfecto, which Iglesia twisted a bit. Indeed, twisted Spanish humor has been and is “ferpect” in its tendency to turn things upside down. And that is how we like it. (Dragan Rubeša)