Stranger in a Strange Movie

Benedicte and Zoe are in France this weekend for an 18th communion. I'm happily playing Senior Rodriguez which is Spanish shorthand for when the cat's away the mouse will drink directly out of milk cartons and leave the seat up.

So after putting my shod feet up on the couch I, in anticipation of making the years first batch of "Cheery Cherry Jam" (scroll down to the bottom of the page) , combined a kilo and a half of cherries with a kilo and a half of suger and left them to become one overnight. I then took myself to see Pedro Almodovar's new movie "Volver", which in Spanish means return .

I hoofed it down to the metro, made a connection and popped up a block away from one of this fair cities finer movie houses. I waited on line, got a ticket, bought a medium coke and an ice cream bar, found the right sala and settled in next to two slightly overwieght older women.

OK a confession, my spanish is only so-so so the complex and lengthy dialogue that Almodovar is fond of would be challenging. But I like his work and for some reason still can't get enough of Penelope Cruz. Let's analyze this Penelope Cruz thing a little bit. I don't really know what is about her but she is just so... Spanish. She walks funny, has a strange nose and odd lips and seems like she would be really a lot of trouble to live with but still she's irresistable in a wierd earthy way. Kind of like Spain.

So the film is this lovely combination of pathos and goofy comedy. Almodovar seems to own this style, nobody else even tries. It's the contridictions; real and fantastical and hopeful and almost happily fatalistic. There are parts of the story that would come off being tragic with anybody but Pedro. People die in Almodovar films. People are crippled in Almodavar films. They get cancer. They get beat up. They get gored by bulls. But it's moving and not sad. It's life; it's funny, magical and transcendant.

Every once in a rare while ans only when I see a film alone, I come out of theater somehow changed. It's like being in a lovely fog where the movie has continued and you're in it. Call it being movie drunk.

I could tell as the lights went up that Señor Almodovar had made me a little more than tipsy. I acknowledged the 2 ladies next to me got up and made my way down the aisle. Depositing my ice cream stick and my empty medium sized paper cup I exited the theater into a very long corridor. Futher along I noticed a sign indicating a bathroom and decided to take the offensive and use it before being trapped in the metro. I entered and was surprised to see that the room was full of loud chattering older Spanish ladies. One of them noticed my confusion. She smiled and pointed out that I was indeed in the right place as the bathroom had a common sink area. I entered the next room, did what I needed to do and rentered the rooms where the sinks were. All the women had left but the electric hand dryer was still going. Back in the long corridor I eventually came to a door that lead to the street which has oddly quiet for a Saturday night in Barcelona. I walked back to metro, passed through the turnstills and took the elevator down to the platform. The train came in a few minutes.

I got off at my station and walked back to my apartment reveling in my last few moments of being altered by a lovely film.