\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be an Almod\u00f3var girl\/Like Maura, Victoria Abril,\u201d the singer-songwriter Joaqu\u00edn Sabina crooned in 1992. The song was an ode to Pedro Almod\u00f3var<\/a>, who even then was a master of passionate cinematic liaisons, often starring defiant women in love.<\/p>\n Over 45 years, numerous actresses have shared that desire to be part of his boldly saturated universe, where despair and elation, sex and violence, tenderness and intense hatred often occupy the same frame. \u201cIt\u2019s a club that I really relish being in,\u201d as Julianne Moore put it in an interview.<\/p>\n Film at Lincoln Center will celebrate that legacy with its highest honor, the Chaplin Award<\/a>, at a gala on Monday where the presenters will include Dua Lipa, John Waters and Mikhail Baryshnikov.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though he constantly reinvents himself and no two of his films are the same, you can always identify a Pedro film by watching just one frame,\u201d said Pen\u00e9lope Cruz, one of his most loyal collaborators. She said Almod\u00f3var\u2019s films pay \u201chomage to all women.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She and Moore were among nine actresses who talked to me about working with the auteur, describing him as both a precise and unique collaborator. Here\u2019s what else they said:<\/p>\n The first time Moore walked into Almod\u00f3var\u2019s apartment for a rehearsal of \u201cThe Room Next Door<\/a>,\u201d she was stunned. She had seen almost every object there and all the hues in one of his films. Moore described this as \u201cphysicalized storytelling,\u201d because the human drama he conjured up also materialized in the eye-catching costumes and sets.<\/p>\n She said she initially assumed that what she was seeing onscreen was drawn from Spain. \u201cTalk about an uneducated thought,\u201d she said. \u201cI was like, \u2018This must be what Spain is like, and that\u2019s what he\u2019s expressing.\u2019\u201d But once she started working with him, \u201cI realized that no, this was completely intrinsic to Pedro. This is how he sees the world. That slightly elevated sense to his stories, the colors, the composition, the energy and the beauty, all of that is Pedro,\u201d Moore said. The actress recalled being shocked at seeing herself in a red turtleneck during one scene while Swinton wore bright green. \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh my God, we just walked into an Almod\u00f3var movie. We\u2019re in it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Collaborating with Almod\u00f3var for the first time on the short \u201cThe Human Voice\u201d<\/a> took some adjustment for Swinton, because the director was so specific in his intention. \u201cHe wants you to follow the marks on the ground but also wants enchantment,\u201d she said. \u201cThe challenge is how to make the shape that he wants but still take him by surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Swinton recalled a moment on \u201cThe Human Voice\u201d when Almod\u00f3var, whom she described as a \u201cromantic filmmaker,\u201d instructed her to stand up dramatically. \u201cI thought, \u2018Well, do I stand up?\u2019 And then I quite quickly realized, \u2018I\u2019m going to stand up there because that\u2019s what I\u2019m going do. There\u2019s no question of it. He\u2019s literally informing your emotion. He\u2019s not saying, \u2018I want this shape, but you find it yourself.\u2019 He\u2019s telling you, \u2018This person, at that moment, has so much emotion that she stands up with this very dramatic gesture,\u2019 which doesn\u2019t come naturally to me, a very white gingery person from Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n The veteran performer Julieta Serrano won a Goya Award \u2014 the Spanish equivalent of the Oscar \u2014 for her role based on Almod\u00f3var\u2019s mother in the semiautobiographical \u201cPain and Glory<\/a>.\u201d Despite the significance of the part, the director didn\u2019t specify how to portray the piercing maternal figure. \u201cThat was liberating for me,\u201d she said. \u201cPlaying characters based on real people can be difficult, but Pedro\u2019s brilliance was allowing us to deliver so much truth without thinking about whether we resembled the real people or not.\u201d<\/p>\n But what Serrano, who also played the betrayed, gunslinging wife in \u201cWomen on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown\u201d (1988), most appreciates about Almod\u00f3var is the way he extracts pathos from comedy. \u201cHe has a prodigious imagination and a sense of humor that digs deep into the human condition,\u201d she said. \u201cThrough laughter he highlights the good, the bad and the ridiculous in us.\u201d<\/p>\n Elena Anaya, who had a complicated role in \u201cThe Skin I Live In<\/a>,\u201d believes all directors who write their own screenplays are emotionally affected when they first see actors become the characters they envisioned. But this feeling is even more intense for Almod\u00f3var, Anaya said. \u201cPedro speaks about the characters as if they were people he has already lived with for years, people he knows very closely, who he loves and defends regardless of the role they play in his stories,\u201d she said. To help an actor invoke the performance he\u2019s after, Anaya explained, he provides precise notes during rehearsals on set. \u201cHe establishes the exact points he wants you to not only reach but to surpass,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything you receive from Pedro is pure nourishment for an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While Cruz had played small parts in Almod\u00f3var\u2019s late-\u201990s films \u201cLive Flesh\u201d and \u201cAll About My Mother,\u201d it was playing a woman unexpectedly reconnecting with her estranged mother in \u201cVolver\u201d<\/a> that strengthened her creative and personal bond with Almod\u00f3var. \u201cEvery afternoon before shooting, we would walk through the small towns, and he\u2019d tell me things about his childhood in La Mancha\u201d in central Spain, she said. \u201cThat film really brought us together.\u201d<\/p>\n But despite their profound trust, there\u2019s still a \u201chealthy fear\u201d in their working relationship. \u201cI never go into the shoot thinking, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m working with my friend, I can relax.\u2019 No, no, no,\u201d she said. \u201cHe sets the bar really high, and that motivates me. It\u2019s a very addictive feeling.\u201d <\/p>\n And yet, Cruz said, the two communicate almost telepathically at this point. \u201cWhen he arrives on set I take one look at him and I already know if he\u2019s slept well or not, if he\u2019s in a good mood, if he\u2019s worried, if he\u2019s happy,\u201d she added. \u201cAnd I think he can do the same with me. I can\u2019t fool him, neither on set nor in our personal relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n To play a woman who spends nearly all of \u201cTalk to Her\u201d<\/a> in a coma, Leonor Watling practiced yoga and classic ballet for months before the shoot. \u201cHe told me, \u2018I\u2019m going to offer you a very strange role, and I want you to read it carefully, because I don\u2019t want you to be dead. I want you to be a very alive presence while being completely still.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Watling remembered that Almod\u00f3var would direct her character\u2019s internal monologue while she was immobile in bed, eyes closed. \u201cHe would say, \u2018Now you\u2019re thinking that you\u2019re walking through a field full of leaves and the leaves are making noise.\u2019 He didn\u2019t want me just lying there.\u201d Although she can now laugh about it, the actress admitted it was difficult for her ego to accept that her first Almod\u00f3var role would be so muted. \u201cPedro has always made me feel so much affection and appreciation for what I did in \u2018Talk to Her,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cHe understands how hard it was for me to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n After making the Oscar-winning \u201cAll About My Mother<\/a>,\u201d in which she played a woman whose son dies tragically, Cecilia Roth asked Almod\u00f3var if he thought her performance would have been different if her own child had been born before they shot the film. \u201cPedro literally told me, \u2018Even a German truck driver is a mother,\u2019\u201d she recalled. \u201cHe believes it doesn\u2019t matter if you have a child or not. All of us who\u2019ve had a mother also have the feeling of motherhood within us,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n Roth said the director knows the exact emotions of his actors and labors to bring these out through the characters. \u201cPedro knows more about you than you do, I\u2019ll tell you that much,\u201d she added. Roth remembers sitting next to Almod\u00f3var at the Academy Awards in 2000 and needing to use the restroom just before the foreign language category was announced. She recalled, laughing, that the agitated director told her, \u201cIt\u2019s always the same with you!\u201d But she made it back in time to hear Pen\u00e9lope Cruz present the Oscar for their film. \u201cLike everything with Pedro, that night was an adventure,\u201d Roth said.<\/p>\n An always memorable character actor, Rossy de Palma has enlivened eight Almod\u00f3var films. For \u201cThe Flower of My Secret,<\/a>\u201d she said, the director derived a great deal from the women in his own family for the hilariously combative scenes between the daughter and mother that she and Chus Lampreave played.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMany of the phrases Chus said were typical\u201d of Almod\u00f3var\u2019s mother, she said, describing the real matriarch as the \u201csupreme screenwriter\u201d given her influence on her son\u2019s work.<\/p>\n De Palma said she adored Almod\u00f3var heroines who weren\u2019t burdened with guilt. There\u2019s \u201cno karmic sense of deserving whatever happened to you,\u201d she said. \u201cNo matter how traumatic the events that occurred are, you have the ability to rise from the ashes like a phoenix and say, \u2018Well, what do we do with what\u2019s left?\u2019 There may be tragicomedy, like in life itself, but there\u2019s no victimhood.\u201d<\/p>\n In Almod\u00f3var cinema, the defining image of Marisa Paredes is her heart-wrenching, lip-synced performance of the bolero \u201cPiensa en Mi\u201d in \u201cHigh Heels.\u201d<\/a> Paredes recalled that the director adapted the role of the torch singer Becky del P\u00e1ramo to include details of her personal life, like setting a scene in a theater where the actress often performed.<\/p>\n Paredes and Almod\u00f3var formed a consummate partnership that heightened the melodrama in his movies. In her last interview weeks before her death<\/a>, Paredes spoke of their collaboration ardently. \u201cTo work with Pedro, you have to jump into the pool with him without a life preserver. You have to give him everything and more,\u201d she said. \u201cHe demands a lot, but for an actress like me, who fundamentally focuses on the contradictions of the character, a director like Pedro suits me very well, and an actress like me always suited Pedro very well.\u201d<\/p>\n For Paredes, one of Almod\u00f3var\u2019s most notable talents was having the intuition and flexibility to take advantage of unplanned occurrences on set. She said, with a subtle laugh, \u201cIf he sees that it enriches the situation, he\u2019ll accept it, because there\u2019s hardly anything \u2014 or rather, nothing \u2014 foolish about him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nJulianne Moore, \u2018The Room Next Door\u2019 (2024)<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Tilda Swinton, \u2018The Human Voice\u2019 (2021)<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Julieta Serrano, \u2018Pain and Glory\u2019 (2019)<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Elena Anaya, \u2018The Skin I Live In\u2019 (2011)<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Pen\u00e9lope Cruz, \u2018Volver\u2019 (2006)<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Leonor Watling, \u2018Talk to Her\u2019 (2002)<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Cecilia Roth, \u2018All About My Mother\u2019 (1999)<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Rossy de Palma, \u2018The Flower of My Secret\u2019 (1996)<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Marisa Paredes, \u2018High Heels\u2019 (1992)<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n