Notes on Pedro Almodóvar's poetics. Proposal to read All about my mother

Abstract

In this article, we briefly review some aspects of Almodóvar's poetics. This allows us, first, to conclude that the exposition of fictional nature in the film itself is the result of the way Almodóvar conceives reality and fiction as a continuum, and, second, to reflect on intertextuality and metafiction as integral characteristics of his cinematic output.

Then, in a more in-depth analysis of the film All About My Mother (1999), we can detect the simple and complex specular intertextual dialogue (Pérez Bowie: 2010) and, at the same time, analyze how complex specularity intervenes in the metafictional interplay. Finally, taking all these aspects into account, we propose a new interpretative reading of the film.