Matador,
1986
Additional
Captures
Writer and Director:
Pedro Almodovar
Other Actors: Eusebio
Poncela, Assumpta Serna, Carmen Maura
Antonio portrays Angel, a wealthy,
hyper-sensitive and tormented young bullfighting apprentice
who faints at the sight of blood and gets dizzy from watching
clouds. When the instructor questions Angel's sexuality he
decides to prove his manhood by raping the instructor's young
girlfriend, a model, but inspires her contempt rather than
fear as he fails even at that. Angel turns himself in to the
police for what he believes to be a successful violation and
he also confesses to murders -- that were committed by his
lawyer (Assumpta Serna).
"The movie,"
says Almodovar, "evokes a very abstract feeling of the two
Spains represented by the two mothers in the story. A modern Spain
and liberal one is embodied by Chus Lampreave in the role of the
mother of the model (Eva Cobo), a spontaneous woman without preconceived
ideas. The other mother, the one of Antonio Banderas, interpreted
by Julieta Serrano, represents what is the worst in Spain, a castrating
mother who is the cause of the psychosis of her child. She generates
a terrible inferiority complex, a mother that is terrible in Spanish
religious manners."
Antonio was chosen
for the role from its conception. Well aware of Antonio's intelligence,
good looks, outgoing nature, and healthy, athletic body, Almodovar
creates the opposite -- a weak, flawed and tormented character for
Antonio to interpret. The Spanish director feels that North American
directors who celebrate those same characteristics of Antonio's
don't know what to do with him.
Julieta Serrano who
played Angel's 'castrating' mother admired Antonio's "subtlety"
and "versatility" and the way he interpreted a very complex
role "with a great wealth of colors, that is the best of an
actor from the theater."
Assumpta Serna, also
in Matador, described Antonio's capacity for "adaptation
and intuition" and as a person who had the "wisdom, in
a moment's determination, to rise to the height of a situation with
personal magnetism. That happened to Antonio at the beginning of
his career. Boys and women were enchanted by him, like a sexual
idol."
Related Information
Matador is Antonio's eleventh film
and his second with Pedro Almodovar. It is his first with Carmen
Maura.
Pedro Almodovar is
considered by many to be a control freak but he describes Antonio
as "hard-headed." In every film that they made together
a temporary conflict arose. "It's just for that one day, the
day he decides to be Caligula, then again, everything is like it
should be and the result is that his work is great," says Almodovar.
Almodovar believes
that "one must direct each actor in a different way. With Antonio,
one must watch over him, control him. Then what happens is that
he does so well that he doesn't notice you are controlling."
Almodovar says that "Antonio acts by osmosis, you have to put
him in the situation and infect it."
Almodovar also describes Antonio
Banderas as the actor who best communicates his vision of
male characters.
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