Watching Soapdish for the first time tonight I had an ever increasing sense of deja vu. I had seen this before - yet I knew I hadn't. It was all weirdly, strangely familiar but all new too. About half way through the film it clicked. I realised I was watching a Pedro Almodóvar film - made by Americans.
It's all there: the frantic over the top relentless pace, the rapid line delivery, the over-the-top emotion and outrageous plot twists played out with the subtlety of a daytime soap. Even the Almodóvar visual trademark of having a strong red element in frame wherever possible is on show.
I like Almodóvar's films. I didn't particularly like Soapdish. It lacked the edge that Almodóvar's films have, an edge that skirts, and often tips over into, downright vulgarity. His films are blatantly Soap Operatic but they are played straight. His films have contained all sorts of disturbing characters and situations: heroin-using nuns, people making (quite funny) jokes in the middle of a rape scene, carers having sex with their coma patients... the list goes on. Quite often in his films you find yourself laughing at things, or condoning things, which you KNOW you should find repellent but somehow... there you are... laughing.
It's what makes him such a great film maker.
At no point was anything even vaguely threatening or vulgar going to happen in Soapdish. It played safe. And strictly for laughs. Then, just to make sure, just in case the audience didn't get it, placed the grotesque soap operatics of the story into the setting of the studios of a daytime soap. Signalled to the audience as loudly as it could that this was not to be taken seriously and the style was deliberate. Corporate film making. They took the veneer of Almadovar's style - even the opening credits are familiar - and applied it wholesale to an acceptable fast-paced Hollywood farce.
The real thing is much better.
It's all there: the frantic over the top relentless pace, the rapid line delivery, the over-the-top emotion and outrageous plot twists played out with the subtlety of a daytime soap. Even the Almodóvar visual trademark of having a strong red element in frame wherever possible is on show.
I like Almodóvar's films. I didn't particularly like Soapdish. It lacked the edge that Almodóvar's films have, an edge that skirts, and often tips over into, downright vulgarity. His films are blatantly Soap Operatic but they are played straight. His films have contained all sorts of disturbing characters and situations: heroin-using nuns, people making (quite funny) jokes in the middle of a rape scene, carers having sex with their coma patients... the list goes on. Quite often in his films you find yourself laughing at things, or condoning things, which you KNOW you should find repellent but somehow... there you are... laughing.
It's what makes him such a great film maker.
At no point was anything even vaguely threatening or vulgar going to happen in Soapdish. It played safe. And strictly for laughs. Then, just to make sure, just in case the audience didn't get it, placed the grotesque soap operatics of the story into the setting of the studios of a daytime soap. Signalled to the audience as loudly as it could that this was not to be taken seriously and the style was deliberate. Corporate film making. They took the veneer of Almadovar's style - even the opening credits are familiar - and applied it wholesale to an acceptable fast-paced Hollywood farce.
The real thing is much better.