Women on the Verge: The Gender Queer Films of Almodóvar

As any proclaimed auteur, Pedro Almodóvar works in tropes. His most recent film, The Skin I Live In (2011), employs many of the director's favorites: disenfranchised motherhood, male-female dynamics, their social consequences, and the desire for an unattainable perfection of beauty. This contemporary take on Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1960)–a self-reported favorite of Almodóvar's–by way of Cronenberg body-horror slickness and the director's own preoccupations encapsulates so much of what makes his work integral. And its depiction of the transgender body highlights the running theme through his work of dismantling the gender binary to arrive at deeper truths. Throughout his career, Almodóvar has used non-traditional gender behaviors and transgender characters in supporting and featured roles to develop a body of genderqueer cinema that is perhaps the most potent we have available to us.

Almodóvar's queering of sex roles isn't always as extreme as in Skin, but his subtler uses still speak volumes. His 2002 film Talk to Her sets out great foil characters in the form of Lydia (Rosario Flores), one of very few female bullfighters, and Benigno (Javier Cámara), a sensitive and impressionistic male nurse. We witness the characters confront traditionally gender-defined roles–Lydia with metaphoric impotence in her comatose state and Benigno with a need to hide unexpected fertility. Each characters' existence outside the typical bonds of gender–even when a struggle–informs much of their personalities. This dichotomy of masculine women and feminized men establishes the complexity of gender in Almodóvar's films.

To add a further layer of identity politics–as best illustrated in All About My Mother (1999)–is how transgender and genderqueer characters influence the behaviors and outcomes of other characters. Three cisgender females are the stars of the piece, led by the titular mother, Manuela (Cecilia Roth), but their relation to the transgender characters is the impetus for the narrative. In interview with Frédéric Strauss for Almodóvar on Almodóvar, the director notes how much of his work comes from news articles he reads. The character of Lola (Toni Cantó), a transgender actor who fathers both Manuela's and Sister Rosa's (Penelope Cruz) children, is an amalgam of people from actual life. For Almodóvar, Lola is "... a perfect illustration of the utterly irrational nature of machismo," in her pursuit of transitioning and her eventual return to be a caregiver to her sons. Earlier on in the film, Sister Rosa's work with transgender women who prostitute themselves lays the foundation for the initial impression of transgender life in the film, but it is also where we become familiar with Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a comic, energetic personality who transcends her life on the street by becoming involved in theater. I find the depiction of Agrado to be a significant contribution to portrayals of transgender people in film, and a jumping off point for Almodóvar to feature this type of character.

The works that have burgeoned from All About My Mother's depictions include stories that can now pivot primarily on transgender characters. Gael Garcia Bernal's Ángel/Zahara in Bad Education represents a realized and autonomous transgender character who drives much of the narrative of the story and who provides the audience a broader understanding of the issues transgender people face. Ángel/Zahara's development from sexually abused boy to woman who owns her sexual identity and is able to confront her abuser firmly underlines that narrative arc; it is a shedding of victimization that can often be attached to transgender and homosexual life. This element of choice in terms of how one represents her or his gender identity and the actions one feels compelled to take against a society that cannot recognize its gender-based limitations, are intrinsically tied to Bernal's portrayal, elevating the work to necessary commentary.

This current flows through Almodovar's film cannon to The Skin I Live In but forks a little differently. Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya) has not an option but an imperative to fully transition from her identity as Vicente (Jan Cornet). I'm very taken with both actors' work as they create a seamless character who overcomes her victim status without disavowing her gender(queer) identity. As with Bad Education, the woman who now exists is able to lift the man she formerly identified as out of victimhood; such circular plots often overlap in Almodóvar's films and strengthen the overall messages in each.

For more than 30 years, Pedro Almodóvar has been developing and presenting challenging cinema through his narratives and visual style. The most valuable challenge may be in his presentation of gender, how it redefines the social standards of male and female behavior and how it gives an authoritative voice to transgender characters. These vivid portrayals I hope live in most viewers' skin as they do mine; being able to take away stories that can positively influence society is a significant feature of true art, and it is clear Almodóvar's art exceeds that standard.

- Kevin Sparrow