For all the movie’s display of the grand romantic gesture in the face of imminent disaster, its filming rarely feels immediate it gives the sense of a staging before the camera rather than an invention in its presence. The sequence is as plain in its pathos as it is effervescent in its comedy it darkens the pursuit of pleasure with the shadow of tragedy, and culminates in the cautionary wisdom of steering clear of the mighty and the entitled.Īt first, I suspected that Almodóvar was so invested in the movie’s ideas that he didn’t have much energy left-or didn’t feel the need to devote much-to the filming. He does so in the film’s most startling and beautiful sequence, set in Madrid, that is built from a telephone conversation between the famous actor and his deceived wife, who is in a desperate situation that’s too juicy to spoil, and that results in an amazing coincidence that makes for one of the most inspired movie moments of the year. European countries still tend to leave the private lives of public figures out of the equation (and out of the news), and this may be why Almodóvar-even as he emphasizes the lusty lives and privileged pleasures of high-flying potentates-also calls attention to the trails of victims they leave behind on the ground. Sex is no longer a perquisite of political power in the United States here, high office is now principally the domain of the faithfully monogamous. It’s apt to be talking about “I’m So Excited!” just as New York City’s 2013 elections are heating up with the scandal-tarred candidacies of Anthony Weiner for mayor and Eliot Spitzer for comptroller. In linking sex and wealth, it’s as if Almodóvar were reversing cause and effect-suggesting that the spirit of excess is also the spirit of enterprise, that the drives for pleasure, success, and power are bound together inextricably. The three stewards aren’t themselves rich or mighty, but they’re the crucial and constant supporting cast of the scene of power. His wide-eyed hedonistic cynicism is sublime, as in the depiction of prostitution as a crucial and unquestioned service to powerful and wealthy men in the personal fulfillment that the dominatrix finds in her plan-B profession in the irony of a boondoggle airport, made through the shady machinations of a dubious financier, that offers the only venue for the anticipated crash landing in the ubiquity of alcohol and drugs and the far greater evil arising from their repression.Ībove all, by way of his portrayal of the three male flight attendants, with their flapping wrists and theatrical mannerisms, Almodóvar asserts that there is such a thing as gay culture, an aesthetic that arises from (but isn’t reducible to) homosexuality-and that this culture is both absolutely central to our idea of culture as such and a universal solvent of sexual liberation (and, therefore, of liberation as such). The setup of economy-class passengers who sleep while the business class carouses suggests that sex is a crucial luxury, one of the major perks of money and power. And when word of the airplane’s troubles spills out to the business-class passengers-including a big-time dominatrix to the high and mighty, a shady banker, a mysterious security agent, a virgin clairvoyant, and a famous actor-the proximity of death (plus a drug-laced cocktail) acts like a truth serum, unleashing a torrent of desires and secrets.Īlmodóvar clearly has a lot on his mind, and he yields it up with clarity and vigor. To start, the fun takes place in the front of the plane-the cockpit and business class-because the coach passengers have been put to sleep for their own comfort. The film’s rich symbolism and ribald comic vitality is centered on a trio of flight attendants, gay men whose flamboyance contrasts with the strait-laced (and straight-laced) behavior of the closeted pilot and co-pilot, with whom two of them are having affairs.
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