Life Enriched by Fiction

One day when he was nine years old and living in a small Extremaduran town of makeshift adobe houses, steep slate streets and dusty, meagre horizons, Pedro Almodóvar caught his mother out in a lie.

The family had recently moved south from La Mancha and Francisca Caballero was making ends meet by reading and writing letters for her illiterate neighbours. As he read over his mother’s shoulder, Almodóvar realised the words on the page did not correspond to the words on her lips.

“She was improvising and saying things that weren’t in the letters,” he says. “My mum knew all the neighbours – she knew the grandmother and the granddaughter and how they got along. And so she made stuff up. For example, if she noticed that no one had asked after the grandmother, she’d say, ‘I hope Granny is very well and knows that I think about her a lot.’ That wasn’t in the letter.”

When they got home, he asked why she had made up the reference to the grandmother. His mother looked at him and replied: “Did you see how happy it made her?”

At the time, Almodóvar was most struck by the fact of the lie. But, as the years passed and he began writing stories on the Olivetti typewriter his mother gave him when he was 10, he came to understand the meaning of her actions. “I realised just what a huge lesson she’d taught me: that life needs fiction to make it bearable. We need fiction so that we can live a bit better.”

The truth his mother imparted that day lies at the heart of El último sueño, the short-story collection-cum-memoir now published in English as The Last Dream. Almodóvar, 74, has travelled an almost unfathomable distance from the house in Orellana La Vieja whose bare earth floors would turn to mud under his mother’s mop.

The stories are as inescapably Spanish as their creator: the little boy abused by the priest is given turrón (nougat); a hospital drainage bag contains “sangria-red urine”; and the director teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown still manages to fit in a spot of present shopping at the local Vips cafe.

A mix of fiction, observation and autobiography, the collection exists largely thanks to the care and efficiency of Almodóvar’s long-serving assistant Lola García, who assiduously grabbed and filed the pieces over the decades, preserving them from house move to house move. Some were written in his late teens and early 20s, others during his first years in Madrid, and some as recently as last year.

“I decided that I wanted to involve the reader in these stories, which, in some way, describe my genesis – as a film director and as a scriptwriter,” says Almodóvar. “Through them, you can kind of see the universe in which I live, my mentality, and how I deal with certain themes.”

As the collection progresses, you can almost see the artist develop: the kitsch, riotous and transgressive early work giving way to something calmer, sadder and increasingly self-reflective. Over the course of 211 pages, the exuberant, coal-haired enfant terrible of Spanish cinema becomes the salt-and-pepper-haired auteur of the late 90s and then, finally, the thoughtful, white-haired sage who sits on the other side of the desk on a merciless Madrid summer afternoon and explains, over bottled water, why the 12 tales tell a more honest story than would a straightforward memoir.

“There’s a biographical line that runs through them, even though some of them are pure fiction,” he says. “It’s a way of looking back at something I found interesting, because I recognised myself in all those stories: even if some were written when I was 17 or 18, I’m still the same person. Yes, things change, time passes and biology changes – there’s nothing you can do about that – but I’m exactly the same person now as I was when I came to Madrid fortysomething years ago.”

The approach also suits an artist whose work is inspired by other films, his reactions to those films, what he reads in the paper and snatches of overheard conversations. Despite The Last Dream’s blend of the imaginary, the real and the recollected, “this is an autobiography in the sense that it represents different stages in my life, and it represents them in a way that’s profound and sometimes mysterious. It’s not obvious. But each page and each line is talking about me.”

Twenty years later came La Movida Madrileña, the decadent post-Franco counter-cultural eruption with which Almodóvar remains inextricably linked. By 1977, two years after the dictator’s death, young Spaniards had lost their fear and embraced their new social, sexual and artistic freedoms.

I’d love to go back to those insane nights of the 80s, but I’d need a week to recover. The abandonment of nocturnal thrills is reflected in The Mirror Ceremony, the tale of a vampire who swaps the dark world for the apparent purity of a monastery.

Almodóvar, who points out that Luis Buñuel came close to adapting The Monk for the screen, confesses to having toyed with a similar idea and has already made notes on how his 22-page short story could become a film.

“I’ve thought about developing The Mirror Ceremony and using the prior, who’s a confessor and spiritual director to different courtesans, as a way to bring in some parts of The Monk,” he says. “Maybe I’ll do it one day.”

The death of his mother in 1999 led Almodóvar to turn his gaze backwards – and inwards. The shift towards the personal and autobiographical, which is evident in his more recent films – not least 2019’s Pain and Glory, which deals with a film director facing his past – is mirrored in his later stories, which are full of uncertainty and solitude. His new film, meanwhile, The Room Next Door, is his first full-length feature in English and stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore as two old friends grappling with illness, regret, family and mortality.

“My references still come from outside – from a book I read, or a conversation I overhear, or something I see on TV – but over the past few years, I’ve been resorting much more to myself as inspiration,” he says. “Well, perhaps not for inspiration, but as a document store. The thing I know best now is myself; it’s my life and my own innards.”

That autumnal, autobiographical approach is most apparent in the collection’s titular story, which sees Almodóvar seeking to make sense of his mother’s life, death, and the epiphany contained in her embellished letter readings. The Last Dream is also a letter of love, gratitude and a belated effort to settle an old debt.

“My mother always used to get very worked up when people talked about Pedro Almodóvar or just Almodóvar,” he remembers. “She used to say, ‘You’re Pedro Almodóvar Caballero because I’m the one who gave birth to you!’ She wanted me to use my full name in my films, and I used to say, ‘No, Mum, you can’t use such long names’. But she was a little miffed that I didn’t use her surname.”

Better late than never – the six pages that make up The Last Dream are signed: Pedro Almodóvar Caballero.

Conclusion

The Last Dream is a poignant and introspective collection that offers a unique glimpse into the life and work of Pedro Almodóvar. Through a mix of fiction, observation, and autobiography, the director reflects on his development as an artist and as a person, revealing a complex and multifaceted individual.

FAQs

Q: What inspired the writing of The Last Dream?
A: The collection was inspired by Almodóvar’s desire to share his personal experiences and insights with readers, as well as his love of storytelling.

Q: What is the significance of the title "The Last Dream"?
A: The title refers to Almodóvar’s desire to capture his mother’s life and spirit in his writing, and to reflect on the power of storytelling to shape our understanding of ourselves and others.

Q: How does The Last Dream differ from Almodóvar’s previous work?
A: The collection is more introspective and personal than Almodóvar’s earlier films, and offers a unique glimpse into his artistic process and personal life.

Q: What can readers expect from The Last Dream?
A: Readers can expect a thought-provoking and engaging collection that explores themes of identity, creativity, and the power of storytelling.