Matador

Diego was a bullfighter; after an injury he opened a school and trains young hopefuls. He misses killing and keeps doing it, on people. So does the lawyer Maria Cardenal, who kills men while sleeping with them and performs it like a ritual. Before the two find each other, Diego's student Angel confesses to murders he did not commit, a boy raised under his mother's pressure and too timid to harm anyone. The idea is to hold desire and death in the same scene and to use the bullfight as the ritual for both. Almodovar plays this not with solemnity but with excess: high colour, theatrical performance, and an eclipse at the end that is pure melodrama. Pedro Almodovar directed. Nacho Martinez plays Diego, Assumpta Serna plays Maria and Antonio Banderas plays Angel, with Julieta Serrano as the mother. It was Banderas's second film with Almodovar, and the character's timidity is the exact opposite of the image he later carried. Who it is for: anyone who likes Almodovar's wild eighties period and mixed genres. Who it is not for: anyone wanting restraint. The film aestheticises killing, the tone keeps sliding, and some scenes have aged uncomfortably.