Matador (1986)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

Pedro Almodóvar

Writers:

Pedro Almodóvar (story)
Jesús Ferrero (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

7 March 1986 (Spain)

Genre:

Drama | Thriller

Plot:

Ex-bullfighter who is getting turned on by killing, lady lawyer with same problem and young man driven insane by over-religious upbringing...

Plot Keywords:

Male Nudity | Female Psychopath | Female Nudity | Woman Drowned | Necrophilia

Awards:

5 wins & 6 nominations

Cast

Assumpta Serna	...	María
Antonio Banderas	...	Ángel
Nacho Martínez	...	Diego
Eva Cobo	...	Eva
Julieta Serrano	...	Berta
Chus Lampreave	...	Pilar
Carmen Maura	...	Julia
Eusebio Poncela	...	Comisario
Bibiana Fernández	...	Vendedora Flores (as Bibi Andersen)
Luis Ciges	...	Guarda
Eva Siva	...	Asistenta María y Diego
Verónica Forqué	...	Periodista
Pepa Merino	...	Secretaria María
Lola Peno	...	Alumna 1ª
Marisa Tejada	...	Alumna 2ª

Also Known As:

Matador (USA)
The Bullfighter (literal English title)

MPAA:

Rated NC-17 for aberrant sexuality including violence.

Runtime:

110 min | Sweden:102 min

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Netherlands:16 | Germany:18 | New Zealand:R18 | Argentina:18 | Australia:R | Chile:18 | Finland:K-18 | France:-12 | Italy:VM18 | Spain:18 | UK:18 | USA:NC-17

Filming Locations:

Madrid, Spain

Company:

Compañía Iberoamericana de TV

Trivia:

The film that Maria and Diego stand watching at the cinema is King Vidor's Duel in the Sun (1946), an equal lurid tale of wayward passion.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Film Geek (2005)

Soundtrack:

Espérame en el cielo

Basic instincts

Lurid and lavish in equal measure, Pedro Almodóvar's "Matador" is crammed full of many of the themes and stylistic flourishes that have come to characterise his later, mature work. Here it's fascinating to witness the director working through his obsessions at an embryonic stage in his career. Wildly uneven, "Matador" lacks the finesse and tenderness of later Almodóvar, but its bracing lack of sentimentality and vivid juxtapositions of cruelty and kitsch certainly ensures it lodges itself in the memory.

The plot, though involved and rather original, is probably the weakest aspect of the movie. At the start we are introduced to Angel (Antonio Banderas), an apprentice bullfighter, besotted with his teacher Diego (Nacho Martinez), a retired maestro of the ring, and oppressed by his fiercely Opus Dei mother (Julieta Serrano). Unsurprisingly Angel has a Catholic guilt complex a mile wide, and, still a virgin, is plagued by doubts about his sexuality. As if to demonstrate that he is as evil as his mother portrays him, and also that he is not gay, as Diego suspects, Angel goes out one night and attempts to rape Diego's girl Eva (Eva Cobo). Next day he hands himself in to the police, and promptly confesses to a whole string of sex murders currently being investigated. At this stage, the focus shifts rather dramatically onto Diego, whose disturbing fascination with sexual violence and necrophilia has already been flagged up. It turns out, too, that he has a female counterpart whose sexuality is similarly depraved, and who just happens to be the lawyer, María (Assumpta Serna), who is representing Angel. Like bees to honey they are drawn together in a wantonly romantic dance of death, symbolised by the approaching solar eclipse. While this might sound fascinating, if not downright nasty (and, yes, the film does contain some particularly repellent imagery, not least the snuff movie to which Diego masturbates at the start), Almodóvar doesn't always have the tightest grip on his self-penned material. The climax to the story is pretty clearly signposted from quite early on, so that any sense of tension or mystery built up in the first half of the film is jettisoned in favour of something altogether darker and more fragrant, but only spasmodically engaging. Diego and María gradually assume the status of mythic symbols acting out a timeless urge to destruction (what Freud identified as the thanatos instinct has rarely been so explicitly dramatised as here), which conversely makes them the least engaging characters in the story, and results in a film with an uncharacteristically (for Almodóvar) cold centre. Let's be thankful, then, for some tremendously witty lines along with some beautifully penetrating ones, and some excellent performances, particularly Serna's. Worthy of special mention, too, is Chus Lampreave, priceless as Eva's indefatigably over-bearing mother. Carmen Maura appears as Angel's psychologist, but it's not a particularly well developed role, and indeed when the movie strays, temporarily, into more conventional policier territory, it loses its way a little.

"Matador" will certainly not be to everyone's taste. The juxtaposing of sex and violence on screen always makes for uncomfortable viewing, but here it does allow for a full on, even archetypal engagement with the eternal struggle to reconcile the oppositional forces of the human psyche: the life and death instincts, love and hate, masculine and feminine, good and evil. And when it's not quite hitting the mark, "Matador" is consistently entertaining and original, a key early work from its creator.