Cinema: Pedro on The Verge of a Nervy Breakthrough

Almodovar hits it big with his steamy melodramas

Dark Habits: a chanteuse brings her boyfriend to her Madrid apartment, where he ODs on heroin and dies. What Have I Done to Deserve This?: an illiterate woman has quickie sex with a muscular student in the shower stall of the kendo academy where she scrubs floors. Matador: a beyond-gorgeous woman picks up a stranger, makes violent love, then stabs him to death with her hatpin. Law of Desire: a young stud is directed through some steamy autoeroticism by an unseen older man. Shock the bourgeoisie? The opening scenes in Pedro Almodovar's films seem designed to shock the Borgias. And that's...

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