If Don Quixote were a feminist…

There’s an inter­view with Pedro Almod­ovar on Volver that real­ly changed my think­ing about his char­ac­ters. In response to why he writes such beau­ti­ful­ly strong women into his films, he claims that it’s based on mem­o­ries from youth, that women ran the home when he observed them as a child, even if men were either at work or in the bar. Par­don my fem­i­nism, but isn’t this the most roman­tic way to char­ac­ter­ize unpaid domes­tic work?

Also: Mr. Frere-Jones prob­lems with the movie take issue with the Coen-esque mur­der mys­tery, but mine are with Raimunda’s state­ment that “they are a poor fam­i­ly, so they’ll live like one.” Once Agosti­na is diag­nosed with can­cer, every­one stops work­ing to sud­den­ly con­cen­trate on hid­ing Paco’s body, sort­ing out things with a moth­er who’s reap­peared and sup­pressed mem­o­ries from childhood.

It’s not about plau­si­bil­i­ty real­ly, but these are the sorts of holes that make you won­der what the movie’s actu­al­ly about in the first place. Okay so there’s an over­ar­ch­ing for­give­ness motif, but why should the view­er have to put those pieces togeth­er so delib­er­ate­ly when its the writer/director’s job to get us there?

And most impor­tant­ly, Pene­lope Cruz should’ve been nom­i­nat­ed for sup­port­ing actress for her role in All About My Moth­er instead of this Span­ish mur­der mys­tery that could’ve been filmed with out­takes from Woman on Top.