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All about Almodóvar A Passion for Cinema Brad Epps and Despina Kakoudaki, editors Table of Contents PRESS: Shepherd Express review		$24.95 paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-4961-7 $75.00 cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-4960-0
New critical perspectives on the filmmaker behind All about My Mother, Talk to Her, and Volver One of world cinema’s most exciting filmmakers, Pedro Almodóvar has been delighting, provoking, arousing, shocking, and—above all—entertaining audiences around the globe since he first burst on the international film scene in the early 1980s. All about Almodóvar offers new perspectives on the filmmaker’s artistic vision and cinematic preoccupations, influences, and techniques. Through overviews of his oeuvre and in-depth analyses of specific films, the essays here explore a diverse range of subjects: Almodóvar’s nuanced use of television and music in his films; his reworkings of traditional film genres such as comedy, horror, and film noir; his penchant for melodrama and its relationship to melancholy, violence, and coincidence; his intricate questioning of sexual and national identities; and his increasingly sophisticated inquiries into visuality and its limits. Closing with Almodóvar’s own diary account of the making of Volver and featuring never-before-seen photographs from El Deseo studio, All about Almodóvar both reflects and illuminates its subject’s dazzling eclecticism. “All About Almodóvar offers new perspectives on Almodóvar’s artistic vision, cinematic influences and techniques.” —Film Maker Contributors: Mark Allinson, U of Leicester; Pedro Almodóvar; Isolina Ballesteros, Baruch College; Leo Bersani, UC Berkeley; Marvin D’Lugo, Clark U; Ulysse Dutoit, UC Berkeley; Peter William Evans, Queen Mary U of London; Víctor Fuentes, UC Santa Barbara; Marsha Kinder, USC; Steven Marsh, U of Illinois, Chicago; Andy Medhurst, U of Sussex; Ignacio Olivia, Universidad Castilla–La Mancha, Cuenca; Paul Julian Smith, U of Cambridge; Kathleen M. Vernon, SUNY Stony Brook; Linda Williams, UC Berkeley; Francisco A. Zurián, U Carlos III, Madrid. Brad Epps is professor of Romance languages and literatures and chair of Studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Despina Kakoudaki is assistant professor of literature at American University. 488 pages | 57 b&w photos | 6 x 9 | 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction. Approaching Almodóvar: Thirty Years of Reinvention Brad Epps and Despina Kakoudaki I. Forms and Figures 1. Almodóvar on Television: Industry and Thematics Paul Julian Smith 2. Queer Sound: Musical Otherness in Three Films by Pedro Almodóvar Kathleen M. Vernon 3. Performing Identities in the Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar Isolina Ballesteros 4. Acts of Violence in Almodóvar Peter William Evans 5. Heart of Farce: Almodóvar’s Comic Complexities Andy Medhurst II. Melodrama and Its Discontents 6. Mimesis and Diegesis: Almodóvar and the Limits of Melodrama Mark Allinson 7. Melancholy Melodrama: Almodovarian Grief and Lost Homosexual Attachments Linda Williams 8. Intimate Strangers: Melodrama and Coincidence in Talk to Her Despina Kakoudaki III. The Limits of Representation 9. Almodóvar’s Girls Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit 10. All about the Brothers: Retroseriality in Almodóvar’s Cinema Marsha Kinder 11. Blind Shots and Backward Glances: Reviewing Matador and Labyrinth of Passion Brad Epps 12. Missing a Beat: Syncopated Rhythms and Subterranean Subjects in the Spectral Economy of Volver Steven Marsh 13. Postnostalgia in Bad Education: Written on the Body of Sara Montiel Marvin D’Lugo IV. The Auteur in Context 14. Inside Almodóvar Ignacio Oliva 15. Pepi, Patty, and Beyond: Cinema and Literature in Almodóvar Francisco A. Zurián 16. Bad Education: Fictional Autobiography and Meta–Film Noir Víctor Fuentes Coda. Volver: A Filmmaker’s Diary Pedro Almodóvar Filmography of Pedro Almodóvar Contributors Index

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