Instead of reading my ramblings of our boring life sheltering in place, read Pedro Almodóvar’s essay on his experience of confinement. How meta, I know. But it’s more fun and interesting. I’m laughing deliciously at anecdotes like this:
“Like Jeanne Moreau, Chavela Vargas, Pina Bausch and Lauren Bacall, Lucia was part of the Olympus/Podium of the modern woman, free, independent, all of them more manly than the men surrounding them.”
And he is precise about an ailment of a condition I also currently suffer: “It’s the downside of being stranded at home, one is easy prey for nostalgia.” You too?
Like his films I am captivated by his writing. I feel like I am right there in Madrid with him. It’s possible I think this because his latest and most autobiographical film, Pain and Glory, for which Antonio Banderas much deservedly received both the Palme d’Or and Academy Award for Best Actor, is all about an aging filmmaker reflecting while mostly self-confined in his Madrid apartment.
We spent a few days eating and drinking our way through Madrid after visiting Andalusia in 2016. My memories of the city are fuzzy at best. I know we went to the Museo del Prado and made a beeline for Velázquez`s Las Meninas:
We had been drinking since lunch, so I was lit and everything was a blur. Alas, it just means we’ll have to go back to Madrid one of these days when this pandemic is over and some form of public life and travel, imagine that, resumes again.
I’ll revisit Madrid through Pedro Almodóvar’s films. All About My Mother, one of my favorite and his best films, would be good to watch again.