'Viva Pedro' celebrates a cinematic master

Who could guess, back in the big-haired 1980s, that Spain's self-appointed bad boy of film would one day be regarded as a cinematic master. But that's exactly what's happened, and adventurous filmgoers can savor Pedro Almodóvar's progression in the eight-film, two-week festival Viva Pedro!, starting today at Landmark's Midtown Art Cinema.

Alas, the movies aren't being screened chronologically, so Almodóvar's artistic growth won't be easily traced, film-by-film. But the mix-and-match approach could create some interesting comparisons.

Sony Pictures Classics 'Viva Pedro' The verdict: Viva, indeed. Director: Pedro Almodovar Re-release date: August 11, 2006 Language: In Spanish with English subtitles Rating: Not rated On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Viva Pedro'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Almodóvar novices may wince at the summaries of his films. But what unifies them is a generosity of spirit that encompasses all his work. Yes, it's all very gay. And transsexual. And whatever-sexual. But ultimately they are about family — biological ones, but also the nontraditional families created by characters as they wend their ways through truly outré plots.

The fest begins with four-day screenings of one of his later masterworks 1999's "All About My Mother," as well as the 1988 comedy that launched him into international stardom, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

On Tuesday, the films will be replaced by the fairly tepid (for Almodóvar) melodrama-romance "The Flower of My Secret" (1995) and the writer-director's equally accomplished (or maybe even better) follow-up to "All About My Mother," 2002's "Talk to Her."

In that film, which won the best original screenplay Oscar in 2003, Almodóvar works his odd magic so well, the viewer comes to feel tenderness, even sympathy, for a male nurse who rapes one of his comatose patients. The hilariously obscene (but also strangely moving) silent film-within-the-film also adds to "Talk's" melancholy-romantic power.

Sept. 29 marks the arrival of the fest's two must-see movies — mainly because they still haven't arrived on DVD in the U.S., and are among his earliest, least-seen and most outrageous.

Possibly the most wacked-out and lurid of the Spaniard's films, "Matador" (1986) starts with a montage of grisly murder images from Val Lewton shlockfests, which our hero watches on TV while he, ahem, pleasures himself. That's the bullfighter of the title (played by Nacho Martínez), a necrophiliac killer who meets his match in a black widow with a very long hatpin (Assumpta Serna).

The then-baby-faced Antonio Banderas has a supporting role in the film. But he has a much larger and shocking part to play in "Law of Desire" (1987) as a young man whose obsession with a gay filmmaker leads to murder. As usual, the tone shifts fluidly from comic to tragic.

One caveat about the festival. Its pose as a comprehensive Almodóvar retrospective is a bit disingenuous. It would be better to say this is a Sony Pictures Classics Almodóvar festival; the titles being shown are all ones that the company distributes here.

That explains why something wan like "Flower of My Secret" makes the cut, while better, wiggier films like "High Heels" (starring "Flower"s lead, the grand Marisa Paredes) and "What Have I Done to Deserve This" didn't. The last film is notable for its matter-of-fact take on an insane world. Carmen Maura (Almodovar's longtime muse, before a falling out in the late 1980s) plays a harried housewife who sells her young son to his pedophile dentist. And that's just the start.

The eight films of Viva Pedro! are all new prints, and several of the titles have not been seen on theater screens since their original release. Maybe someday we'll get to see "What Have I Done to Deserve This" and "Kika" and "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" back on the big screen as well. But for now, any Almodóvar is better than none. And his latest, "Volver" — greeted with the same acclaim as his films since "All About My Mother" will be coming to theaters in November.

Viva, indeed.