Video Essay: Total Design | Almodóvar’s Law of Desire & Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Read more about this video essay on MUBI's Notebook: https://mubi.io/2lTBWne
The 32nd entry in an on-going series of audiovisual essays by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin. MUBI's retrospective, The Art of Transgression: The Cinema of Almodóvar, is streaming in the UK: https://mubi.io/almodovar

"Total Design: Pedro Almodóvar’s Law of Desire and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin

Color is rarely naturalistic or subdued in the films of Pedro Almodóvar. It announces itself, moves the given elements around and plays with them. Set design, costume, and lighting are tightly intermeshed in his style.

The overall visual design of an Almodóvar film does not aim to be subtle or invisible, but it is definitely aims to be total—to take hold of every parameter of mise en scène and performance, every significant object and move in the plot.

Our second audiovisual essay in this three-part series looks at Law of Desire (1987) and Almodóvar’s breakthrough film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988).

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