Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: the skin he lives in / Marvin D'Lugo and Kathleen M. Vernon -- Part I. Bio-Filmography: 1. Almodóvar's self-fashioning: the economics and aesthetics of deconstructive biography / Paul Julian Smith; 2. Creative beginnings in Almodóvar's work / Francisco A. Zurián; 3. Almodóvar and Hitchcock: a sorcerer's apprenticeship / Dona Kercher; 4. A life, imagined and otherwise: the limits and uses of autobiography in Almodóvar's films / Alberto Mira -- Part II. Spanish Contexts: 5. El Deseo's "Itinerary:: Almodóvar and the Spanish film industry / Marina Diaz López; 6. Almodóvar and Spanish patterns of film reception / Josetxo Cerdán and Miguel Fernandez Lagayen; 7. Memory, politics and the post-transition in Almodóvar's cinema / Juan Carol Ibáñez; 8. The ethics of oblivion: personal, national, and cultural memories in the films of Pedro Almodóvar / Adrissn Pérez Melgosa -- Part II. At the Limits of Gender: 9. Our rapists ourselves: women and the staging of rape in the cinema of Pedro Almodóvar / Leora Lev; 10. Paternity and pathogens: mourning men and the crises of masculinity in Todo sobre mi madre and Hable con ella / Dean Albritton; 11. Domesticating violence in the films of Pedro Almodóvar / Noelia Saenz; 12. La piel que habito: a story of imposed gender and the struggle for identity / Francisco A. Zurián -- Part IV. Re-Readings: 13. Re-envoicements and reverberations in Almodóvar's macro-melodrama / Marsha Kinder; 14. The flower of his secret: Carne trémula and the Mise en scene of Desire / Celestino Deleyto; 15. Scratching the past on the "surface" of the "skin": embodied inter-subjectivity, prosthetic memory, and witnessing in Almodóvar's La mala educación / Julian Daniel Gutiérrez-Albila; 16. Almodóvar's stolen images / Javier Herrera -- Part V. Global Almodóvar: 17. Women on the verge of nervous breakdown: from Madrid (1988) to New York (2010) / Isolina Ballesteros; 18. Almodóvar's global musical marketplace / Kathleen M. Vernon; 19. Almodóvar and Latin America: The making of a transnational aesthetic in Volver / Marvin D'lugo; 20. Is there a French Almodóvar? / Jean-Claude Seguin; 21. Almodóvar in Asia: Hong Kong, Taiwan and LGBT film culture / E.K. Tan -- Part VI. Art and Commerce: 22. To the health of the author: art direction in Los abrazos rotos / John D. Sanderson; 23. Making Spain fashionable: fashion and design in Pedro Almodóvar's cinema / Gerard Dapena; 24. Almodóvar, cyberfandom and participatory culture / Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega.

Annotation Edited by leading authorities on the subject, and bringing together a stellar cast of contributors, this detailed appraisal of Pedro Almodovar's unique cinematic art examines the themes, style, and aesthetics of his oeuvre and locates it in the context of the profound cultural transformations in Spain since the 1970s.

Print version record.