Matador (1988)

the audience applauded

Powerful

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I was very much surprised and shocked by how much I enjoyed this film, which at times to me ventures dangerously close to what I would call a "snuff film." The story follows the character of a retired matador who murders women for his sexual pleasure, videotaping them so that he is able to pleasure himself later on when he watches them. He eventually meets his match in another character (a lawyer) that is just as murderous and played by Assumpta Serna. The film is actually wonderfully acted and photographed throughout. The film is crazy, sexy, outrageous, and at times very much shocking. The storyline, which includes the wonderfully mad and sexy Antonio Banderas, having visions of these murders, makes so little sense, but in the long run doesn't really matter. Beyond the overtly sensationalistic pleasures that go on - there is a sharply perceptive insight about how people enjoy looking at and even causing the violence. I would point out that the focus on bullfighting is not a critique of the sport per se, as much as an opportunity to have a conversation of the darker side of human nature.

I liked the film Almodóvar made just prior to this a lot more; 1984's What Have I Done to Deserve This? was a far more involving, concentrated and reigned in effort about a group of women living in a cold; damp; greyed out; unwelcoming Madrid striving to get by amidst volatile living conditions and family members. It was witty, punchy and taut: a real treat. While I'd furiously champion that film if you're seeking out early Almodóvar, his 1986 effort Matador leaves a bad taste in the mouth; a wandering, sprawling freak show of a film documenting irritating; destructive and border-line psychotic people getting mixed up with one another in webs of "love" and "passion". It is nonsense of the highest order; a wandering, sprawling piece that treats an array of sensitive subjects in a grandeur and disrespectful manner. Maybe it's about the sorts of items the cinema of Spain had been mostly starved of over the decades prior to the 1980s due to strict censorship, but in truth; it's a relatively routine, drab thriller with a little bit of trashy sex sprinkled in, about a misogynist whom it's gradually revealed might be coming around to realise his ways as whom it is his eye catches goes through a routine process of idolising somebody a tad too much.The misogynist and idol in question is a certain Diego (Martínez), a trained matador who now teaches after a bit of an incident several years ago during a bullfight in which he was gored. He teaches young Ángel (Banderas), the lone interesting character of the film whose impetulance in being a youth sees him overreact and do something daft early on resulting in the film imprisoning him for most of the rest of it. This means we get to focus on Diego and a certain María (Serna) bickering; bantering and meeting at all sorts of odd times in odd places as lust and so fourth rages. Diego is a man that likes pain; derives pleasure from pain and particularly pain inflicted on women given how much he enjoys the horror film he watches at the beginning. This, before we cut to the same gentleman lecturing on how to skewer a bull to a class of matadors. Next scene, María is murdering a poor hapless chap by 'goring' him in her own unique way; a sharp hair pin into somewhere just thinking about sends shivers down my spine. This is what links them, you see – sadism attracts sadism; the longing for dangerous and powerful romantic interludes attracts the longing for dangerous and power........oh, you get the idea. María is a lawyer, and even turns out to be Ángel's attorney after he turns himself in for an attempted rape on neighbour Eva (Cobo), someone who just happens to be Diego's girlfriend.What begins as a slightly interesting and edgy drama about a number of colourful people interacting with each other on this plateau of suspicions and the questioning of one's identity quickly dissolves into bland Euro-centric dribble designed to shock and confuse, written and directed by a man on a then-brief vein of form that sees him ramble without consequence as the revelling in grotesque content comes across as that of the 'high-art'. Maybe to him and some others, to the rest, it's just juvenile. The film systematically uses Ángel to tap into Spain's problematic past and both Diego and María as tools documenting what everyone else in every other Western nation are "obsessed" with in their texts so as to provide some sort of closure on where Spain and its art (plus attitudes) might (or ought) be headed. The case study between the two romantic leads exemplified by the two graphic sex scenes María is involved in: grotty, greyed out and uncouth in a run down locale with a nobody earlier on, but in a lavish; colourful; exquisite; log-fire lit locale later on with Diego.Almodóvar has fun addressing the past in the character of Ángel, a young man that lives with his mother in a rather expensive home having had a Catholic upbringing, and we get the sense he's been kept as far away from any sort of temptations, however seemingly minute, as possible. This is touched upon in a sly moment when Almodóvar has him engage with Diego around a billiards table, Diego asking for a game to which Ángel does not even attempt to rise to simply by saying he "does not know how to play". It would seem pool houses, items such as gambling and the like have been in no way omnipresent throughout Ángel's life. Issues of sexuality are questioned – this representation of the more 'classical' young Spanish male then driven to go out so as to try and rape a girl; a neighbour, someone local, thus clearly establishing a sense of desperation or suddenness in the act, built up by anger. But incarcerating Ángel is Almodóvar's method of telling us he's dealt with that bit and now wants to focus on the scummy leads, systematically rendering Ángel's strand one of a detective driven nature as police officers struggle to work out what has driven this young man to do the things he says he has done. The film is remotely interesting at the best of times, off-the-wall; grotesque and rather stupid at the worst – culminating in a bizarre race against time borrowed from many-a past thriller rendering the entire experience a wholly unpleasant way to spend an hour and a half.

I absolutely agree with the comment above. This movie is degrading. I also loved Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and saw this film and god I wish I wouldn't because I felt traumatized. Such a lack of sensibility. It's very violent. I cant understand how a human being with feelings can watch this. It should be advised for everybody before watching it. This film is trash. You wont even get a good story if you forget about the explicit and extreme violence shown. You feel dirty after having watched this film. I don't understand why Pedro Almodovar did this. What's the sense? Scandalize? I mean, I don't understand, we all scandalize and make a public protest because we watch too much violence on TV (just wrestling programmes where people hit themselves hard) and we are so cynical that find normal to show brutal decapitations, massive murders on screen? Whatever.

This movie is not an easy movie to watch, it can be very disturbing to most people. But there is a message in this movie but you need to view the entire film. Matador translate into the killer. In Mexico and Spain Bull fighting is a big part of the culture. Fathers will often take their son to his first bull fight with extreme pride. They will watch the matador basically slaughter the bull to death, with cheers coming form the crowd. This sport is not appreciated by most of the USA, Canada and vegetarians. Unless you are a hunter. What I Believe Pedro Almodovar does is put people into the characters. The matador is a man and the bull is the woman. We the viewer are the crowd. Showing us how absurd it is to watch a killing as a sport. Showing the matador who gets off on the hunt and kill, the bull who lives to be killed but must be killed in the sport. To me the sex in this movie describes the sport, which lead you to contemplate how sex has become sports like in our society. No matter what your views are on sex. My favorite films by Pedro Almodovar is first "Law of desire", Second is "Matador" and third is "Tie Me Up, Tie me down" with this film subtext on Stockhom Syndrome.