Highlights from the Fall Arts Guide

Viva Pedro

To Thursday, Oct. 19

Film this week

Anyone who thinks Pedro Almodóvar has just been getting better and better should approve of this eight-film retrospective’s lineup, which begins with 1988’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and moves mostly forward from there. The opener was not only the spanish bad boy’s stateside commercial breakthrough but also an artistic turning point: It marked the director’s shift from satires and thrillers about outrageous boys and girls to melodramas about tragic “women”—and don’t think Almodóvar wasn’t aware of those quotation marks. This trend continued though 1995’s The Flower of My Secret, in which a middle-aged author tries to write something other than her trademark romances; 1997’s Live Flesh, a revenge drama with a fetishistic regard for the ability to give birth; 1999’s All About My Mother, which follows an actress’s recovery from the death of her son; 2002’s Talk to Her, a sensitive tale of a man who rapes his comatose ideal woman; and 2004’s Bad Education, in which a vengeance-seeking woman at least has the decency to be a man in drag. But Almodóvar was a lot more fun before all that, and this series includes two movies to prove it: 1987’s Law of Desire is a polysexual murder mystery set in the vibrant demimonde of a gay Madrid director, while 1986’s Matador is Lethal Weapon with bullfighting—and a pitch-black sense of humor. “Viva Pedro” runs through Thursday, Oct. 19, at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 495-6700. $9.25. (Mark Jenkins)