#eva cobo

[filmreveries]

“I love you more than my own death.”

Matador (1986) dir. Pedro Almodóvar

[blindingasylumwhisper]

Eva Cobo

[genevieveetguy]

Today, the art of killing. If you've fought the bull well, you must kill it well. If not, it's a tragedy for both. The matador doesn't live up to his name, and the bull's bravery is betrayed.

Matador, Pedro Almodóvar (1986)

[kaipanzero]

Operation Condor

飛鷹計劃 (1991)

[clairemercie]

Matador (1986) directed by Pedro Almodóvar 

[lifejustgotawkward]

365 Day Movie Challenge (2019) - #144: Matador (1986) - dir. Pedro Almodóvar

(Warning: some spoilers ahead.)

How do I begin to describe Matador? It’s a psychological profile of how violence influences sexual impulses, a thriller in which cops are stymied by a series of confounding murders and - not unlike the later Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! - a warped comedy as only Pedro Almodóvar could conceive it, darkly satirizing societal assumptions about the perceived normal functions of heterosexuality.

Working overtime from the start to prove why Matador earned an NC-17 rating, the film opens with an credit sequence in which bullfighting instructor Diego Montes (Nacho Martínez, looking and sounding like a Spanish Jeremy Irons), masturbates while watching a slasher horror film on TV. In his mind, the desire he experiences when engaged in sexual activity and the way he feels when a bull is gored in the ring are inextricably linked. (This is attributed to an injury that ended his career as a matador.) One of Diego’s students, Ángel (Antonio Banderas), wants badly to live up to the ideal of manhood that he sees in his mentor, so when Diego asks Ángel (an admitted virgin) if he is gay during a post-class conversation one afternoon, Ángel freaks out and decides he has to do something to prove his straight masculinity. Later that night, he attempts to rape Diego’s girlfriend, Eva (Eva Cobo), but he cannot; she accidentally cuts her cheek while trying to escape and Ángel faints at the sight of her blood.

In an attempt to redeem himself, Ángel turns himself into the local police station, where a detective (Eusebio Poncela) doesn’t know what to make of the young man’s confession. Even after Eva refuses to press charges, despite her mother Pilar’s (Chus Lampreave) wishes, Ángel claims to be the perpetrator in more crimes: the murders of two women who had been his classmates at the bullfighting academy. This leads to the introduction of another major character: María Cardenal (Assumpta Serna), who inserts herself into the case as Ángel’s lawyer. She plays an integral part in the investigation, as we know from her first appearance in the film when Ángel has a vision of her fatally stabbing a man in flagrante. The movie totally glosses over Ángel’s clairvoyant abilities, but apparently he has had the condition he has had since he was a child... just an oddball detail we have to accept. Almodóvar is clearly more interested in exploring the electricity between Diego and María, who share dangerous passions.

Matador is as off-the-walls weird as I expected, so although the film is not as satisfying overall as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Pedro Almodóvar delivered by giving his cast so much compelling material. The heat between Nacho Martínez and Assumpta Serna blazes, while young Antonio Banderas, Eva Cobo, Chus Lampreave, Julieta Serrano (as Banderas’ super-religious mother) and Carmen Maura (a sympathetic police psychiatrist) also excel. There are also cameos by other Almodóvar favorites Verónica Forqué (the star of Kika), trans icon Bibiana Fernández (Law of Desire, High Heels, Kika) and Eva Siva (”Luci” in Pepi, Luci, Bom), plus Almodóvar himself as an agitated fashion designer. I would not suggest Matador as any viewer’s first foray into the director’s filmography, but if you understand his unique sensibilities and wouldn’t mind immersing yourself in the colorful cinematography of Ángel Luis Fernández and lush score by Bernardo Bonezzi, this film comes highly recommended.

[elcineasta]

Matador | dir. Pedro Almodóvar (1986)

[mrfahrenheit92]