Matador 4K 1986

I really love Pedro Almodóvar’s films. So many of them. For example, I love *Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!* and *Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown*, which stars Antonio Banderas—whose characters, incidentally, are quite similar in many ways to the one he plays in this film.

In that unique absurdity often found in his films, in the otherworldly quirks of his characters—there’s something special about all of it, something that makes you want to watch them over and over again. ‘The Matador’ has some of that too, but still, this film, along with another film, ‘The Unseemly Charm of Vice,’ just didn't quite work for me.

Too much defies explanation; while the behavior of the brutal ex-matador Diego, starved for bloodshed, comes as no great surprise, far stranger is the monstrous female lawyer—she’s a true maniac whose actions defy explanation.

Banderas’s character is also baffling; there’s a certain absurdity and childishness to him that elicits a smile, much like in the aforementioned films I enjoyed. But here, he’s just some kind of lunatic sociopath. And where did this gift of prophecy suddenly come from at the end? Or I don’t know, maybe a strict religious upbringing affects young people in such a way that it completely drives them out of their minds...

The most understandable characters are probably the hapless model Eva and the investigator, but these characters are secondary; their role in this story is minor, so there’s no point in discussing them at length either.

I don’t even know—in my opinion, this film feels like some kind of rehearsal, for example, to create the terrifying maniac Nicholas from *Kiki*, to depict a bullfight beautifully yet brutally, as in ‘Talk to Her,’ to bring two great guys to the screen, like the desperate Ricky from ‘Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!’ and the childish Carlos from ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,’ and, of course, to create absolutely stunning female characters in many subsequent films.

I’d like to add one thing: it’s good that the main characters are so happy, and at least, for now, they won’t be killing anyone else.