High Heels (Tacones lejanos)

"Pedro Almodóvar’s films are an acquired taste, and with High Heels I am at last beginning to acquire it. It is accomplished with wit, style and outrage, and ... it works." – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Mother Becky (Marisa Paredes) and daughter Rebecca (Victoria Abril) meet again when Becky returns to Madrid after a decade-and-a-half spent in Mexico. Resentment boils to the surface Rebecca recalls a childhood spent with a largely absent mother, who was more concerned with her own career and multiple lovers. Now that they have reunited, Becky finds out that Rebecca is married to one of her old flames. A love triangle ensues and murder becomes inevitable in this Douglas Sirk-ian melodrama.

Following the success of our recent retrospective of Spain’s revered filmmaker, we were deluged by requests for additional gems from Almodóvar’s middle period - some say his finest - which we’re hastening to oblige. As in our original program, all titles have been painstakingly restored to their original splendor. Launching this limited one-week series will be Dark Habits (Entre tinieblas), the film that introduced the maverick director’s work in the US with its premiere at the first Miami Film Festival in 1984. Enjoy!

Program notes adapted from MoMA’s Almodóvar retrospective.

Check out the rest of our Almodóvar II program!