The Author’s Body: Almodóvar, Film Theory, and Embodiment

Abstract

This chapter turns attention to the porosity of bodily boundaries in the films of Pedro Almodovar. Considering the trope of the body in relation to the function of authorship in film studies, it takes the authorship of Almodovar as a case in point. The chapter addresses both the representation of bodies in Almodovar’s films, as gendered, transformable, vulnerable, permeable, lost, and resurrected, and the formation of Almodovar’s corpus as a vulnerable body in itself. It brings out how Almodovar’s invocation of bodily themes at the level of film structure effects a splitting and doubling of each individual film that contain stories within stories, identities within identities, and bodies within bodies. Such splitting and doubling also bring about a blurring of filmic boundaries, between an inside and outside of the film’s narrative structure. The author calls attention to a motion of self-differentiation within each individual film body on the level of structure, story, and character in which inside and outside are blurred and elliptical, dividing the work from within. This blurring and splitting applies not just to individual films, but also to the work as a whole, troubling its relation to the author and the boundaries between and within individual films and the full corpus of films.