Pedro Almodóvar’s cinema is immediately recognizable for its bold visual language– a symphony of vibrant colors, meticulous decor, and flamboyant fashion that has evolved over more than four decades. From his scrappy, transgressive early films of the 1980s through the lavish melodramas of the 1990s and into the polished, reflective works of the 21st century, Almodóvar has crafted an aesthetic as distinctive as his storytelling. Critics often note that few filmmakers have a style as distinctive as Almodóvar’s, defined by “maximalist costumes [on] Pop-colored sets, populated by campy characters whose identities shift over the course of a film as frequently and dramatically as the brightly colored paint on the walls” . In other words, every frame of an Almodóvar film is bursting with color and texture, the art direction and costume design working in tandem to express emotion and theme. His visual style – replete with “vibrant prints, saturated color palettes, and mid-century modern design” – makes his films unmistakable . Across his full filmography from the 1980s to today, this essay will trace how Almodóvar’s art direction, set decoration, and costume design have developed in concert with his storytelling, and how these aesthetic choices serve narrative and character at each stage of his career. We will see how what began as punk exuberance and camp excess matured into a sophisticated visual language that still retains its subversive edge. Along the way, insights from critics, theorists, fellow directors and key collaborators (production designers, costume designers, and actors) will illuminate the critical reception and cultural impact of Almodóvar’s sumptuous style.
Almodóvar emerged from La Movida Madrileña, the countercultural explosion in post-Franco Spain, and his early films unabashedly embrace the spirit of camp, kitsch, and provocation. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, as a young artist in Madrid, he drew inspiration from punk music, underground comic art, and the liberated queer nightlife around him. “We imitated their lifestyle – the way they sang, the way they lived – but it was also mixed up with something that was our own and very idiosyncratic,” Almodóvar said of the Movida scene’s debt to punk and New Wave influences . This synthesis of foreign pop culture and uniquely Spanish sensibilities birthed a brash, new aesthetic in his first features. Films like Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap (1980) and Labyrinth of Passion (1982) were made on shoestring budgets, but what they lacked in resources they made up for in outrageous imagination. In these early works, Almodóvar revels in what critic Vicente Molina Foix called “unashamed bad taste”, deploying garish color clashes, gaudy kitsch elements, and absurd costumes to flout Spain’s previous cultural conservatism . The result was a kind of deliberate artistic exaggeration that aligns with Susan Sontag’s notion of camp. Sontag famously defined camp as a sensibility that embraces “frivolity, excess and artifice”, viewing life as theater and style as substance . Almodóvar’s early films wholeheartedly embody this ethos. Every gesture is in quotation marks, performed with a wink – or as Sontag put it, camp is a way of consuming or performing culture “in quotation marks” . In Pepi, Luci, Bom, for instance, the sight of a punk singer cheerfully knitting while being urinated on in a “golden shower” gag is presented in such an over-the-top, cartoonish manner that it becomes a deliberate send-up of propriety and realism . Almodóvar even joked about the crude technical quality of these films, quipping that “when a film has a lot of technical flaws, it is called style”, a tongue-in-cheek defense that underscored how his DIY flaws were recast as deliberate stylistic choices . Outrageous humour, melodrama, and visual excess became the hallmarks of his early style, announcing a bold new voice in Spanish cinema.
Despite their provocations (or indeed because of them), Almodóvar’s 1980s films established him as a cult figure and enfant terrible. His third feature, Dark Habits (1983), exemplified the collision of traditional Spain with pop subversion: it set a story of drug-addicted nuns against deliberately kitschy set pieces (a neon-lit Holy Heart, tigers as pets in a convent) to poke fun at religious iconography. Each nun in the film has a moniker like “Sister Manure” and outfits that reflect her eccentricity, blending the sanctity of the habit with the profanity of their actions. The film’s production design and costumes use the stark contrast of somber habits against lurid pop-cultural decor to create irreverent visual comedy. In What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984), Almodóvar turned a cramped Madrid apartment – yellowed walls crowded with knickknacks and a pet lizard roaming free – into a theatrical stage for a grotesque family satire. While the setting is a drab working-class home, he peppers it with absurdist touches (like Grandma feeding herself only on lizards and mothballs) that push the mundane into the surreal. By saturating the ordinary with bizarre details, Almodóvar established a form of costumbrismo camp – a caricatured take on everyday Spanish life through an exaggerated aesthetic lens.
Perhaps the clearest early statement of Almodóvar’s developing visual language came with Matador (1986) and Law of Desire (1987). In Matador, a dark romantic thriller, he juxtaposed the gloss of high fashion with the gore of bullfighting imagery: the matador’s blood-red cape and the matador girlfriend’s elegant red and black dresses mirrored the film’s themes of eroticized violence. The set decoration included fetishistic art (like bullhorns mounted on walls and macabre paintings) to underscore characters’ obsessions. Meanwhile, Law of Desire – his first film under his own production company El Deseo – featured a film director protagonist living in a chic modern apartment filled with pop art, neon signs, and a kitschy illuminated palm tree lamp. These objects weren’t mere decoration; they externalized the character’s flamboyant creative mind and the film’s queer sensibility. One memorable prop is a pink neon sign reading “Sexolino” in the director’s office, a playful emblem of the story’s blend of sexuality and artifice. By the time of Law of Desire, Almodóvar had refined his ability to use décor to reflect character psychology, even as he maintained a playful, self-referential tone. As one artist friend from the Movida remarked of Almodóvar’s characters in this era, “She was his alter ego – optimistic, gracious, and a bit zany”, underscoring how Almodóvar projected his own campy optimism onto the screen through these colorful avatars.
Almodóvar’s international breakout came with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), a film that crystallized the exuberant aesthetic of his 80s work while reaching a wider audience. Women on the Verge is a madcap comedy, and its look is appropriately extraordinary. The sets are a Pop-art paradise, from the ultra-modern penthouse of the protagonist Pepa (with its bright red walls, royal-blue couches, and a sky-blue telephone that becomes a key plot device) to the kitschy mambo-themed taxi careening through Madrid’s streets. Almodóvar and his design team built Pepa’s apartment interior from scratch, allowing them complete control over the color scheme and décor. The result was a hyper-stylized space that one critic described as looking “more like a magazine spread than a real apartment” – deliberately artificial, yet utterly captivating. As The New Yorker noted in a retrospective, “the art direction [in Women on the Verge] seemed determined to erase the distinction between life and the lifelike. Everything in the movie – from the stagy view of the Madrid skyline to the gazpacho, which puts one person after another to sleep, as if they were characters in an operetta – seemed to belong more to the world of cromos than to reality.” Here “cromos” – literally chromolithographs or collectible picture-cards – suggests that Almodóvar’s Madrid is a deliberately two-dimensional, decorative construct, a comic-book or postcard version of the city. Filmed in super-saturated color and even using a wide CinemaScope-style frame to exaggerate the visuals, Women on the Verge transforms the screwball chaos of its plot into pure spectacle. The costumes match this tone: “bedazzled denim jackets, candy-colored skirt suits and polka-dot blouses paired with headbands and towering bouffants”, as Vogue describes them . The characters seem to dress as if they know they are in a farce – sporting vibrant, coordinated outfits that externalize their larger-than-life personalities. For example, Carmen Maura’s Pepa wears a signature red suit and red earrings shaped like tiny telephones, visual shorthand for her passionate, desperate attempt to reach her lover. Even minor details became iconic – such as a pair of earrings shaped like miniature espresso pots worn by the film’s ditzy model character, a witty nod to the film’s caffeine-fueled hysteria . This playful yet deliberate approach to costume and decor in Women on the Verge earned Almodóvar his first wave of major critical acclaim. Critics praised the film’s “extraordinarily bright” design and its comic-book energy , recognizing that Almodóvar had achieved an original fusion of form and content: a feminist screwball comedy where the look of the film – its pop-art interiors and chic, absurd fashion – was as much the story as the dialogue.
Having conquered the 1980s with a new brand of Spanish pop cinema, Almodóvar entered the 1990s looking to deepen his narratives while retaining his visual flair. During this decade, his art direction and costumes became more polished and at times more elegant, yet no less bold. He also began collaborating with internationally renowned designers, further blurring the line between film costume and high fashion. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989), technically still 80s but heralding his 90s style, already showed a slight shift: it’s a romantic dark comedy about a woman held captive, and much of it unfolds in a single apartment. The set design there is more realistic (a modest apartment with warm, lived-in clutter) compared to the hyper-artifice of Women on the Verge, reflecting a more intimate story. Still, Almodóvar couldn’t resist touches like a vivid pink bedspread and kitschy carnival toys strewn about – signifiers of the childlike regression and absurd romance at play. Victoria Abril’s character, a B-movie actress, spends much of the film in a short floral sundress that accentuates her vulnerability and later appears in a sleek black corset that underlines the story’s kinky undertones. These costume choices support the film’s oscillation between sweetness and perversity.
In High Heels (1991), Almodóvar paid explicit homage to the melodramas of old Hollywood and the telenovelas of Spain, and his art direction mirrored those influences with a glossy, neon-lit veneer. The film centers on a fraught mother-daughter relationship and the aesthetics are appropriately theatrical. Scenes unfold in TV studios, dressing rooms, and nightclubs, allowing for dramatic lighting and glamorous wardrobe changes. Marisa Paredes, who plays the famous mother (a nightclub singer), is costumed in glamorous gowns and a show-stopping red sequined dress for her stage performances, instantly evoking vintage diva icons. Meanwhile, Victoria Abril as the daughter (a TV news anchor) has a professional yet stylish wardrobe of form-fitting suits and, notably, a pair of killer stilettos (the titular “high heels”) which become a plot point and symbolic link between mother and daughter. Almodóvar uses the bright red heels as a visual motif – they are a gift from mother to daughter and later a key clue in a murder investigation – thus literally making fashion a driver of the narrative. The cinematography bathes scenes in saturated pinks and blues, as if the emotional neon of the characters’ inner lives spills onto the sets. This “Pop Art exuberance” in color and design connects High Heels back to the tone of Women on the Verge, even as the film’s content is more dramatic . Indeed, a later critic comparing eras noted that High Heels and its mid-90s cousin Kika were marked by a flamboyant visual excess that Almodóvar would soon dial back . Nonetheless, High Heels demonstrated how Almodóvar could handle high-camp style within a more emotionally heavy story, using style to amplify the melodrama. One indelible scene features a drag performer (played by Miguel Bosé) impersonating the mother character on stage, dressed in an extravagant replica of her gown and singing her signature song. The drag queen’s costume and act are a mirror within the film, doubling the image of the mother in exaggerated form – a perfect emblem of Almodóvar’s multilayered approach to identity and performance, rendered through costume and spectacle.
If High Heels flirted with excess, Kika (1993) dove in headfirst. Kika is often cited as Almodóvar’s most unabashedly gaudy and controversial film, and its production and costume design are a riot of clashing colors and daring tastelessness. The titular character Kika (played by Veronica Forqué) is a naïve makeup artist whose wardrobe is an explosion of clashing prints and quirky accessories – she wears neon green tights with orange miniskirts, polka-dot blouses with big bows, and hairpieces adorned with fruit, as if Carmen Miranda dressed from a bargain bin. These outfits establish Kika’s childlike, optimistic personality in visual terms; she is a walking candy store, oblivious to the darkness around her. In stark contrast, Victoria Abril’s character in the film, a vampiric reality-TV presenter named Andrea Caracortada, wears one of the most infamous costumes in Almodóvar’s oeuvre. For a scene in which Andrea investigates Kika’s rape (a scene deliberately staged as grotesque farce, to the disquiet of many critics), she dons a black vinyl bondage-inspired jumpsuit complete with cone bra and a built-in video camera headpiece – a costume so absurd and provocative that it feels plucked from a fetish-themed fashion runway. This outfit was, tellingly, designed by the legendary French fashion enfant terrible Jean-Paul Gaultier, whom Almodóvar enlisted as a guest costume designer for the film . Gaultier’s involvement signaled how entwined Almodóvar’s cinema had become with haute couture by the early ’90s. In Kika, Gaultier’s creation satirizes the voyeurism of media: Andrea literally wears a camera on her head, her entire body turned into a sensationalist recording device. The suit’s shiny black surface and aggressive design also parody the idea of women’s fashion as empowering armor – here it’s taken to comical extremes, rendering the wearer both alluring and monstrous. The set design of Kika is equally outlandish. Kika’s apartment is decorated in blinding yellows and reds with kitschy knick-knacks, and the bathroom where the notorious scene takes place has tiles of a nauseating lime-green. Almodóvar places a giant smiling sunflower on the bathroom wall, a cruel joke contrasting the cheery décor with the violence of the scene. The hyperreality of the art direction – nothing looks natural or subdued – was polarizing. Some critics found Kika’s visual extravagance and tonal inconsistency off-putting, accusing Almodóvar of favoring style over substance in this period. Indeed, the film’s initial reception in Spain was lukewarm despite multiple Goya nominations, and internationally it was one of his more critically divisive works. Yet others recognized that even at his most excessive, Almodóvar was attempting something subversive: Kika pushes camp into areas of discomfort, using garish style to challenge the audience’s thresholds. In retrospect, even Almodóvar admitted that treating something like rape as a backdrop for wild satire might have been a miscalculation, but he stood by the film’s audacious visuals. Kika today is often studied for its deliberate assault on good taste and its commentary on media sensationalism – communicated largely through that Gaultier costume and the cartoonish TV studio sets where Andrea prowls. The film marks the high-water mark of Almodóvar’s 90s maximalism; after Kika, he pivoted toward a more restrained and introspective style, as if realizing that to continue growing as a storyteller, he needed to occasionally dial down the cacophony.
That pivot came with The Flower of My Secret (1995), a relatively muted drama that serves as a bridge into Almodóvar’s later phase. Here, the aesthetic is toned down to serve a story about a romance novelist in crisis. The color palette is cooler and more somber – lots of blues, grays, and mauves – a marked departure from the primary colors of earlier films. The main character, Leo (Marisa Paredes), is often dressed in black or earthy tones, reflecting her depression and maturity. Her Madrid apartment set is stylish but not flashy: tasteful modern furniture, bookshelves lined with literature, and an understated use of reds (for instance, a single red lampshade or red roses) to hint at the passion and anger beneath her controlled surface. This film also contains a fascinating intertextual detail: a brief scene where a character describes a story idea about a mother’s ghost caring for her family – effectively sketching the plot of Volver, which Almodóvar would make a decade later. It’s as if in The Flower of My Secret he plants a seed for his future, and appropriately the visual style, while restrained, still finds room for bright “Almodóvarian” touches in dream sequences and moments of melodrama. For example, in one scene Leo wanders through Madrid in a bright fuchsia coat during a rare snowfall – the shocking pink against the white snow is an image of romantic desolation that could have fit in his more flamboyant films, proving he never truly abandoned his love of striking color contrasts, even in his quieter works.
By the late 1990s, Almodóvar had fully harmonized his vivid style with deeply emotional storytelling, resulting in some of the most celebrated films of his career. All About My Mother (1999) stands as a pinnacle in this regard. It’s a film drenched in color and sentiment, openly theatrical and yet profoundly heartfelt – and its art direction and costume design garnered as much praise as its screenplay and performances. Set between Madrid and Barcelona, All About My Mother follows a tapestry of women – a nurse grieving her son, a pregnant HIV-positive nun, a trans sex worker, an aging stage actress – and each character’s essence is reflected in her wardrobe and surroundings. The film’s wardrobes are stylish and dotted with cherry-red accents throughout . Indeed, the color red becomes a connective thread: Manuela (Cecilia Roth), the protagonist, wears a now-iconic bright red coat for much of the film, a symbol of her grief (red often symbolizes loss and life in Almodóvar’s palette) and her passionate resolve to find her son’s father. Sister Rosa (Penélope Cruz), the young nun, wears demure blues and grays in the convent, but when off-duty she sports a cherry-red headscarf, subtly linking her to Manuela and foreshadowing their surrogate mother-daughter bond . Agrado (Antonia San Juan), the trans sex worker character, dresses in flamboyant, tight-fitting outfits with bold patterns and shiny fabrics – she even jokes in her famous monologue that her aesthetic (her silicone breasts, her dyed hair) is all carefully chosen so she can “feel authentic.” Her costumes visually assert her constructed but sincere identity. Almodóvar’s frequent costume collaborator José María de Cossío did some of his finest work here, balancing the extraordinary (Agrado’s sequined clubwear) with the ordinary (Manuela’s sensible nurse uniform or jeans) but unifying them through touches of vibrant color. The production design similarly mixes realistic environments with heightened flourishes. Many scenes take place in and around theaters – fittingly, since the film is steeped in theatricality, including a meta-performance of A Streetcar Named Desire onstage that mirrors the characters’ own dramas . Backstage areas are cluttered with costumes and mirrors, creating visual metaphors about identity and performance. In Barcelona, the street scenes are painted in Almodóvar’s signature hues: building facades of deep ochre and teal, a Gaudí-designed park with tilework in earthy reds and greens, and a sky often tinted in post-production to a more intense shade of blue. The visual compositions are rich with saturated primary colors – one oft-cited shot shows Manuela and Rosa sitting on a bench with Rosa in a bright yellow blouse and Manuela in her red coat against a backdrop of vivid blue tiles. The effect is like a living Piet Mondrian painting, balancing red, blue, yellow in harmonious tension. Beyond pure aesthetics, these choices serve narrative and theme: Almodóvar uses the color coding and set dressing to create connections among this mosaic of women and to reinforce the film’s core ideas about motherhood, performance, and identity. The critical reception of All About My Mother was rapturous, with many reviews praising its “ravishing” visual design and heartfelt homage to women. It earned Almodóvar the Best Director prize at Cannes and his first Oscar (for Best Foreign Language Film), cementing his status as a world-class auteur whose style was not superficial but deeply integrated with substance.
Entering the 2000s, Almodóvar continued this synthesis of melodrama and visual artistry, perhaps with an even more refined touch. Talk to Her (2002), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, has a notably more subdued art direction compared to the pop-art explosions of his earlier works, yet it remains unmistakably Almodóvarian in its careful use of color and costume. The film’s storyline – two men bonding over their comatose beloveds – is intimate and melancholic, and the production design reflects this with softer tones and more minimalistic settings. The primary locations (a hospital, a dance studio, an apartment) are rendered in understated colors like pale blues, beiges, and whites, as if to create a calm canvas for the characters’ emotional turmoil. This restraint was a conscious shift; as one commentator noted, “the art direction is subdued compared to the Pop Art exuberance of High Heels or Kika, [but] the costumes are no less ravishing” . Indeed, Almodóvar and costume designer Sonia Grande (another frequent collaborator) ensured that clothing would provide the pops of character and color that the sets now delivered more sparingly. Notably, the character Lydia, a bullfighter, is seen in her bold matador costume – a traditional “traje de luces” (suit of lights) embroidered in gold – during a pivotal scene where she is gored by a bull. The ornate details of her bullfighting suit stand out against the arena’s earth tones and instantly convey her bravery and the high stakes of her profession. In contrast, in the modern scenes, one of the best-dressed characters is the elegant dance instructor Katerina (played by Geraldine Chaplin), who appears in crisp white shirts and impeccably tailored jackets that signal her old-world grace and discipline . By costuming Chaplin in a timeless, monochromatic style (she looks like she could have stepped out of a 1950s Dior photoshoot), Almodóvar gives the film a touch of classic elegance. Meanwhile, the younger male characters wear casual, soft fabrics in solid colors – gentler attire that reflects the film’s subdued emotional register. Almodóvar still sneaks in moments of visual flamboyance: most famously, Talk to Her contains a surreal silent film sequence in black-and-white, which one of the characters watches. In that mini-film, titled “The Shrinking Lover,” a man shrinks to a tiny size and crawls under bed sheets between a woman’s legs. It’s shot like a vintage 1920s silent movie, complete with exaggerated theatrical sets and costumes (the actress in that sequence wears heavy white face makeup and dramatic eyeliner, invoking silent film star look). This whimsical interlude momentarily brings back the director’s love of artifice and retro style in an otherwise contemporary drama, and it serves a thematic purpose by visualizing the male character’s sense of helplessness and devotion. The contrast between the muted palette of the “real” story and the stylized monochrome of the silent fantasy underscores Almodóvar’s evolving control: he can integrate wild, campy imagery (a tiny man exploring a giant woman’s body) into a poignant narrative without tonal whiplash. Talk to Her was lauded by critics for this balance and is often considered one of his masterpieces. The modesty of its set decoration did not go unnoticed; it was seen as a sign of a maturing artist who could hold back his penchant for extravagance until the precise moment it was needed. As Almodóvar himself reflected, he aimed for fewer “distractions” in this film so that its delicate emotional threads could shine – yet, tellingly, even in holding back, he delivered scenes of unforgettable visual poetry.
If Talk to Her represented a mature refinement of Almodóvar’s style, Bad Education (2004) showed his ability to re-engage his flamboyant side in the service of a complex, darker narrative. Bad Education is a neo-noir tale of abuse, identity, and cinema itself, layered with flashbacks and a film-within-the-film. This gave Almodóvar and his art department the challenge and opportunity of designing multiple periods and realities: 1960s Franco-era Spain, the garish 1980s Movida, and a present-day 1980s storyline that folds in on itself. Each layer has its own distinct look. The 1960s segments (depicting a Catholic boarding school) are shot in a muted, nostalgic style – the boys wear simple uniforms, and the color scheme is all faded grays, browns, and institutional greens. It’s a restrained recreation of a repressive environment, with strict order in the composition (rows of desks, plain crucifixes on the walls). When the story jumps to the early 1980s, Almodóvar floods the screen with the neon colors and wild fashion of that era, almost as if Bad Education’s contemporary scenes take place in the same universe as his actual 1980s films. Gael García Bernal’s character, an ambitious young actor named Ángel (and later taking on a drag persona Zahara), is at the center of these scenes. For Zahara, Almodóvar and costume designer Paco Delgado created a striking drag look: Gael appears in a platinum blonde wig styled like Marilyn Monroe, heavy makeup with bright blue eyeshadow, and a skintight sequined dress for a nightclub performance of the song “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás.” The effect is to make him a vision of exaggerated femininity, both alluring and somewhat artificial – entirely in line with the camp aesthetic that Zahara adores. It is notable that Almodóvar enlisted fashion iconoclast Jean Paul Gaultier once more for some costume pieces in Bad Education, as he had on Kika . Gaultier’s touch is evident in the cut of Zahara’s dress and the priest’s couture-like cassocks in the film-within-film, bringing high fashion into the realm of sacrilege. In the present timeline of Bad Education, the production designer Antxón Gómez (a longtime Almodóvar collaborator who started in the late 90s) gave the settings a noirish glamour: the film director’s apartment is stylish and modern, with glass brick walls and a monochrome color scheme, contrasted by splashes of deep red in things like a silk bathrobe or a lamp – a nod to noir cinematography’s love of shadow punctuated by neon signs. When the characters travel to a small town in a flashback, the look momentarily echoes an old Spanish film (earthy tones, a rustic bar). And in the movie’s meta-climax – the premiere of the fictional movie within Bad Education – Almodóvar playfully shows us a film poster in the style of 1970s giallo or B-movies, with lurid colors and bold font, hanging in a cinema lobby. It’s a wink to the audience and a self-referential nod to his own love of film history. Bad Education was applauded for its layered narrative, but critics also took note of its visual confidence. One reviewer pointed out that Almodóvar was channeling Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma in this film – not just in the plot’s twists, but in the look of it, from the Hitchcockian Vertigo-style color gradients in some sequences to the De Palma-esque use of a split screen motif in one scene . Almodóvar’s knack for homage through style is indeed strong here: Bad Education pays tribute to film noir and classic suspense thrillers through its shadowy lighting and costume tropes (e.g., a femme fatale in drag, a hard-boiled writer in a guayabera shirt). Still, it remains distinctly him through the integration of camp – where else in a noir would you see the lead don a Chanel-inspired pink suit to confront a blackmailing trans woman? Such juxtapositions of high camp and high drama are pure Almodóvar. The film’s critical reception noted this unique blend; even when the narrative’s convolutions puzzled some, the consensus was that Bad Education’s style was sumptuous and purposeful, reinforcing Almodóvar’s status as a visual storyteller par excellence.
With Volver (2006), Almodóvar returned to the realm of female-centric melodrama, infusing it with the warmth of folk art and the sensuousness of classic cinema. Set partly in Almodóvar’s native La Mancha region, Volver (which means “to return”) is saturated with a nostalgic yet vibrant aesthetic that draws on both rural Spanish culture and the glossy image of 1950s Italian film divas. The style cues for the film, as one observer noted, come from “Spanish soap operas and a pre-Hollywood Sophia Loren”, causing Volver to “sizzle with sensuous promise” . At the center of this is Penélope Cruz’s unforgettable portrayal of Raimunda, a hardworking mother with a dark secret. Almodóvar explicitly styled Cruz to evoke Italian bombshells like Loren or Anna Magnani: she wears patterned pencil skirts, floral tops, and plunging gingham cardigans, offset with gold hoop earrings and a crucifix locket . This wardrobe by Bina Daigeler (costume designer on the film) is both rooted in the reality of a working-class Spanish woman’s attire and heightened just enough to turn Raimunda into a kind of earthy goddess. The floral prints and form-fitting dresses celebrate Raimunda’s vitality and sexuality, while accessories like the locket bearing a tiny crucified Christ nod to the character’s blend of piety and passion. It’s telling that even while washing dishes or mopping a restaurant floor, Cruz’s Raimunda looks effortlessly glamorous – not in a contrived Hollywood way, but in the way a strong real-life woman carries herself with pride in personal style. The production design in Volver complements this character-focused costume work by enveloping Raimunda in a world of color and pattern. Her home in Madrid is painted in warm tones; the kitchen tiles are a vivid turquoise, and curtains have bright floral motifs. When the story shifts to the La Mancha village of Raimunda’s childhood, we see “sun-dappled courtyards” and traditional houses painted white with blue trim, capturing a picturesque rural Spain . Yet Almodóvar and his production designer give these settings a twist: the courtyards are filled with vividly colored flowers and laundry, and interiors have bold wallpapers (one memorable kitchen scene has a red wall covered in giant white polka dots behind Raimunda and her visiting mother-ghost). Such details bridge realism with a touch of the surreal, fitting for a story that involves ghosts and a hint of magic realism. Another key element in Volver is the use of red – a color Almodóvar uses often to signify life force and connection. Raimunda’s mother (played by Carmen Maura) appears wearing a bright red sweater when she’s “resurrected” as a ghost, linking her to Raimunda (who frequently wears red as well) and symbolizing the generational bond of blood and love. We see red in the scenography too: the town’s women cleaning graves at the outset are surrounded by red and orange flowers, tying death and “volver” (return) to life and color. Critically, Volver was hailed not just for its emotional narrative but for the way it looked and felt like a loving homage to womanhood and to Almodóvar’s roots. A Sight & Sound review noted that the film’s vibrant visual palette – all those riots of color and print filling every corner of the screen – works in tandem with the theme of returning to one’s past and finding beauty and strength in it. The film’s success (including an Oscar nomination for Cruz and the Best Actress award at Cannes for the female ensemble) underscored that Almodóvar’s evolving visual style – now a bit more grounded, but no less expressive – was key to its resonance. The images of Cruz washing blood out of a knife in a basin of water under a clear blue sky, or opening a restaurant amid the glow of red neon lights, linger in the memory as testaments to Almodóvar’s ability to make melodrama visually poetic.
Almodóvar’s late-2000s film Broken Embraces (2009) can be seen as a self-reflexive celebration of his own visual obsessions, almost a summary of the styles he had played with over the years. It’s a film about filmmaking – the protagonist is a director – and it toggles between the present (2008 or so) and the early 1990s, with the latter segments featuring a film-within-the-film titled Girls and Suitcases. That fictional film is a clear parody of Almodóvar’s own Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, allowing him to recreate the gaudy 80s style on purpose and then contrast it with the slick look of the “real” world in the story. In the 1990s scenes, actress Penélope Cruz (as Lena, the aspiring actress character) is costumed to the nines to reflect the indulgent lifestyle provided by her wealthy lover. We see Lena clad in an austere Alaïa skirt suit, a silk Hermès scarf around her neck, and later a stunning Chanel couture ballgown dripping with gold chains . These outfits speak volumes about her character’s arc: initially, she is playing the role of the trophy mistress (in sharp, impractical high fashion that constrains her, like the form-fitting Alaïa that suggests both power and entrapment). But when Lena breaks free with the director lover, fleeing to the island of Lanzarote, her style notably shifts – she dons flowy sundresses, loose floral skirts and wide-brimmed straw hats, symbolizing the liberation she feels with her true love . This is a concrete example of Almodóvar using costume design to signal character development: as Lena’s circumstances change, so do her clothes, moving from tight and dark to breezy and light. Meanwhile, the present-day scenes have a film noir aesthetic. The color palette is cooler – lots of blacks, whites, grays – with the occasional flash of red (for instance, a red table lamp in the otherwise monochrome office of the blind screenwriter protagonist). The cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto bathes interiors in a golden light that suggests nostalgia and loss. Fittingly, when the characters watch the old footage of Girls and Suitcases, those scenes explode in exaggerated brightness and color, reminding us of the playful style of Almodóvar’s own early 90s. The recreation of Women on the Verge inside Broken Embraces is delightful: the set features the same ultra-bright colors and pop-art props (a chaotic apartment with powder-blue walls and loud tropical prints), and the actress within the film (also played by Cruz, who is effectively playing dual roles) wears a cheesy wig and 80s fashion disasters – a deliberate contrast to Cruz’s elegant 2000s look as Lena. This nested portrayal allowed Almodóvar to almost spoof himself and also to show how far his visual language had come. In interviews, he said Broken Embraces was partly about confronting his past styles and influences. We can see tributes to Hitchcock here too: one scene has Cruz in a Vertigo-like blonde wig and trench coat standing in profile against a green light, a direct nod to Hitchcock’s stylization in that film . The movie didn’t earn the same level of universal acclaim as Volver, but critics did single out its aesthetic pleasures. Vogue later noted that Broken Embraces’ costumes “are some of Almodóvar’s best, setting the scene for a tense, Hitchcock-esque romance” . By the end of the 2000s, it was clear that Almodóvar had mastered a wide range of visual tones: he could go from the garish to the refined, from screwball comedy style to noir thriller style, all while maintaining an artistic through-line that was uniquely his. As film scholar Kathleen Vernon observed, even when Almodóvar switched genres or moods, there remained “the personal seal in all his movies: the color red” and an overall Almodóvarian sensibility that fans could spot.
The 2010s saw Almodóvar continuing to experiment with genre and tone, which in turn inspired new aesthetic approaches – yet always anchored by his distinctive color sensibility and design detail. The Skin I Live In (2011) was one of his most striking genre departures – a foray into psychological horror and science fiction-tinged thriller. Visually, this film is sleek, clinical, and eerie, quite unlike the warm palettes of his previous two films. The story, about a deranged plastic surgeon who keeps a woman captive while experimenting on her skin, unfolds largely in a modernist mansion and laboratory. Antxón Gómez’s production design for the mansion emphasizes cold elegance: floors of polished marble, walls in neutral grays, large contemporary artworks (like sculptural human figures) placed sparsely, and an ultra-clean surgical room bathed in stark white light. There is a disconcerting sterility to these spaces – fitting for the surgeon’s obsession with control. Yet Almodóvar can’t resist touches of bold color even here: one room has a wall painted a deep blood-red (against which a violent struggle occurs, the red foreshadowing what will happen there), and there are luxurious red velvet curtains in an otherwise minimalist bedroom. These isolated red elements almost function like warning beacons in the decor. The film’s most memorable visual element, however, is the flesh-colored bodysuit that the captive woman, Vera (Elena Anaya), is forced to wear – a second skin that renders her simultaneously covered and naked. This costume, essentially a full-body stocking of seamless beige latex, was custom-designed (by Paco Delgado) to fit Anaya like a glove, with an expressionless mask that covers all but her eyes. It’s as iconic in its way as the Gaultier outfits in earlier films, but here the effect is chilling rather than playful. The suit makes Vera look like a clinical art object, a doll or a mannequin, highlighting the film’s themes of objectification and identity erasure. At one point, Vera manages to obtain a form-fitting red dress, and the contrast is jarring – the sudden presence of a normal, vibrant garment on her signifies a return of humanity and sexuality that the second-skin suit had stripped away. Almodóvar also uses flashbacks in The Skin I Live In which are given a slightly warmer, softer look (the past is more sepia-toned and humane, versus the present’s bluish surgical glow). Critically, The Skin I Live In garnered praise for its unsettling, stylish design. The Los Angeles Times remarked that the film was “cool and elegant, with production design to die for,” emphasizing that the controlled visual atmosphere intensifies the perverse story. Some critics, however, felt that the immaculate style created an emotional distance – that Almodóvar’s usual warmth was intentionally absent, making the film a beautiful but cold exercise. In any case, the film demonstrated his range: he could apply his aesthetic precision to horror/thriller tropes as effectively as to melodrama, and still make it look like Almodóvar (few other filmmakers would feature a Tiger lounging in a garden as a casual detail, or dress a rapist in an absurd full tiger costume as happens in this film – these bizarre touches of surreal humor amid horror are pure Pedro).
After the intensity of The Skin I Live In, Almodóvar surprised everyone with a swing back to broad comedy in I’m So Excited! (2013) (original Spanish title: Los amantes pasajeros). This gleefully silly farce, set almost entirely on a plane in mid-air, is something of an outlier in his late career – it intentionally harkens back to the madcap energy and bawdy camp of his 80s work, albeit with the benefit of a bigger budget and more polished execution. The production design leverages the single location for comedic and stylistic effect. The airplane’s interior is deliberately not the drab beige we expect of commercial jets; instead, it’s designed in shades of cream and bright turquoise, with retro-futuristic touches that make it look more like a set from a 1960s comedy or the famed “Popé Airlines” from Women on the Verge. The flight attendants’ uniforms are a vivid turquoise blue with orange neckerchiefs, a color combo that pops against the white seating – it’s reminiscent of the mod fashions of the ’60s, again giving a wink that this scenario is a nostalgic fantasy rather than reality. Indeed, I’m So Excited! feels almost like a play: the plane set is stylized, a stage where outlandish things occur. Almodóvar injects the cabin with playful props like multicolored cocktails, a drug-laced Valencia cocktail (shades of the gazpacho from Women on the Verge), and even neon pink sleep masks for the unconscious passengers in economy class. The cockpit, rather than looking high-tech, has big manual levers and flashing lights straight out of an old Hollywood depiction of flying. All these choices imbue the film with a cartoonish, camp atmosphere. And of course, there is the show-stopping musical number: three male flight attendants lip-sync and dance to the Pointer Sisters’ hit “I’m So Excited” in the aisle to entertain the oblivious business-class passengers. For this scene, the attendants change out of their uniforms into sparkling bolero jackets and matador-inspired hats, another outrageous costume choice that blends Spanish cultural reference (the torero hat) with camp performance glitz. The choreography and costumes make the scene feel like a spontaneous drag cabaret at 30,000 feet. Critics were divided on I’m So Excited! – some appreciated it as a throwback bit of froth, others saw it as a minor trifle. But nearly all agreed that Almodóvar’s candy-colored production design and commitment to camp aesthetics were front and center. The Guardian quipped that the film was “as camp as a row of pink tents,” underlining how its visual and comedic sensibility indulges in a kind of self-parody of Almodóvar’s own camp legacy. In the context of his oeuvre, this film’s primary contribution is showing that even as a veteran director, Almodóvar could still let loose with unapologetic frivolity and visual flamboyance, almost satirizing the airline-industry and sexual farce tropes through design. Though not as critically acclaimed as most of his work, it adds a chapter to the story of his style, reaffirming his roots in camp and proving that his sense of humor in set and costume design remained intact.
After that lighter interlude, Almodóvar gravitated back to drama with Julieta (2016), a film that required a delicate visual approach to match its somber, introspective tone. Julieta spans three decades (1980s, 1990s, and 2010s) in tracing the life of a woman and her estrangement from her daughter. This gave Almodóvar a chance to do a period piece of sorts, re-creating 1980s Spain in flashbacks and contrasting it with the contemporary scenes – a bit like Bad Education but focused on domestic life and female fashion rather than neon nightlife. The costume design by Sonia Grande in Julieta is extremely telling. In the flashbacks to the 1980s when Julieta is a young woman, the costumes include power-shouldered blouses, bright clip-on earrings, and other ‘80s hallmarks . We see young Julieta (Adriana Ugarte) in, for example, a bold colorful windbreaker and big hair when she meets her future lover on a train – outfits that anchor those scenes in the era of Almodóvar’s own early career. The sets in these past scenes also gently evoke the period: an inter-city train carriage with mustard-yellow upholstery, a rustic fishing village house with dated decor, etc. However, nothing is overdone; Almodóvar treats the past with a somewhat dreamy, hallucinatory sheen (as the Vogue piece noted, those flashbacks “contain plenty of 1980s references” but are memories, slightly idealized) . When the film transitions to Julieta’s present (circa 2015), the style becomes markedly more luxurious and contemporary-chic, reflecting that older Julieta (Emma Suárez) is an educated, cultured woman in Madrid. She wears elegant designer pieces – notably, she favors outfits from Céline and Hermès in neutral or rich tones . In one scene, she wears a camel-colored Hermès coat that quietly exudes refinement and also a certain emotional armor. In another, she’s in a black Céline dress at an art gallery – minimalist and a bit severe, mirroring her internal grief and guilt. By contrast, a secondary character, Beatriz (Michelle Jenner), who is of a younger generation and brings Julieta news of her daughter, is depicted as fashion-forward and trendy: Beatriz is “head-to-toe Dior” in her key scene . She sports a Dior logo scarf and a chic outfit that makes her look like she stepped out of a high-end Madrid boutique. This sharp difference in wardrobe between Julieta and Beatriz underscores the gap between Julieta’s stagnant life (frozen in sorrow and classic styles) and the world that has moved on around her, embodied by Beatriz’s modern vibrancy. Set design in Julieta also reflects Julieta’s emotional states: her apartment in Madrid is tastefully decorated in cool blues and grays, with carefully chosen art pieces and furnishings that evoke a tidy, controlled life – until memories begin to intrude. One visual motif is the sea and water (Julieta’s past trauma is tied to the sea); Almodóvar uses a palette of blue in paintings, wallpaper, and even a striking scene where Julieta’s depression is depicted by her nearly blending into a blue-toned background. The critical response to Julieta often mentioned its visual elegance. It wasn’t as flamboyant as some earlier Almodóvar works, but reviewers like those at The New York Times noted that the film was “ravishingly beautiful” in a more subdued way, with a refined color scheme and impeccable production design that serve the story’s elegiac mood. Indeed, one could say Julieta shows Almodóvar using his visual mastery in a minor key – the film’s look is mournful, rain-soaked at times (literal rain and muted lighting), but with bursts of his trademark beauty shining through (such as a stunning transition where young Julieta’s hair transforms from blonde to the older Julieta’s gray in a single match cut with a towel – a simple effect executed with pure visual storytelling acumen ). The reception of Julieta confirmed that Almodóvar could exercise restraint without losing his visual impact; if anything, the maturity of the design garnered him fresh respect from critics who perhaps found some earlier works too gaudy. It was a reminder that his aesthetic could be nuanced and narrative-driven, not only loud and decorative.
Almodóvar’s most recent feature film to date, Pain and Glory (2019), serves as a culmination of his evolution – appropriately, since it’s an autobiographical meditation on his own life and art. In Pain and Glory, all of Almodóvar’s visual motifs and talents coalesce to create a deeply personal yet unmistakably stylized world. The protagonist, Salvador Mallo (played by Antonio Banderas in an award-winning performance), is essentially a fictionalized Almodóvar – an aging film director reflecting on his past. As such, the film’s art direction blurs the line between Almodóvar’s real life and fiction like never before. In fact, the primary set – Salvador’s apartment – is a meticulous replica of Almodóvar’s own home in Madrid, filled with the director’s actual furniture, books, artwork, and vibrant decor . Production designer Antxón Gómez, who has worked with Almodóvar for years, painstakingly re-created this environment, knowing how vital it was to the story. “For Pedro, interior design is a character in the movie,” Gómez has said , and in Pain and Glory that is literally true: the camera lovingly pans over Salvador’s living space, telling us about him through his possessions and their arrangement. The living room is a riot of color and art. We see walls painted a deep red-orange, adorned with modern art pieces like a surrealist painting by Maruja Mallo (one of Almodóvar’s favorite artists) and a black-and-white photograph by Man Ray . These are not random choices – they are pieces from Almodóvar’s own collection, symbolizing the influences and obsessions of the character/director. The furniture, too, is design-conscious: there’s a notable red Utrecht armchair (a Gerrit Rietveld design) and other mid-century modern pieces that hint at a lifelong appreciation for design classics . Every object seems to have a story (and indeed, dialogue in the film even alludes to the stories behind certain items, like a painting Salvador covets). This approach strongly underlines the theme that one’s home, like one’s art, is an externalization of self. As Gómez described, “each furniture piece and accessory has a story behind it, accompanying and reinforcing the emotions of the character and the personal experiences of the director.” . In terms of color, Pain and Glory is lush. Gómez noted that Almodóvar’s personal “seal” of using the color red is still there, along with a palette of “blue-gray, ash green and apricot” that the team had developed in recent films . They typically avoid stark white and certain tones like rose or mauve, preferring bold masses of color as a backdrop . Indeed, in Pain and Glory, rooms are often painted in saturated hues (Salvador’s kitchen is a bright apple-green, another room is a dusty turquoise) which serve as a canvas upon which objects and actors stand out. The idea, as Gómez said, was that “the sets are a base-color canvas where we place objects, which now feature prints” – meaning the background might be a solid strong color, and then layered with patterned cushions, artworks, textiles, etc. The cumulative effect is rich and inviting; Salvador’s loneliness is somewhat belied by how alive his surroundings feel, full of memories and color. This was intentional: the film is suffused with nostalgia and life, even as it deals with pain. We also get flashbacks to Salvador’s childhood in a poor village, which are visually distinct: those are bathed in natural sunlight, white walls and earthy tones, as a young Salvador and his mother (Penélope Cruz) live in a literal cave-house. In one gorgeous scene, village women do laundry by a river and sing. Almodóvar fills the screen with vivid primary colors here – the women’s dresses and headscarves in bright reds, yellows, blues against the whitewashed walls – creating an almost archetypal memory of a rural community . The contrast between the humble beauty of those memories and the art-filled sophistication of Salvador’s present apartment visually encapsulates the journey of Almodóvar’s own life. On the costume front, Pain and Glory is equally revealing. Banderas’s character Salvador is clearly modeled after the real Almodóvar, down to the spiky silver hair. His wardrobe is a treat: despite his depression and physical ailments in the film, Salvador dresses flamboyantly, as if instinctively expressing his creative soul. He wears brightly colored leather jackets, jewel-toned suits, and boldly printed shirts – some of which were lifted directly from Almodóvar’s personal closet for authenticity . This detail, confirmed by the filmmakers, adds a meta layer: when we see Salvador in a patterned purple shirt or a fire-engine-red jacket, we are essentially seeing Almodóvar’s own fashion sense projected onto the character . It’s a wonderful example of using costume as characterization; even if one didn’t know the biographical link, the choice to dress Salvador in such vibrant attire (rather than having him slump around in muted pajamas, which could have been an approach for a “depressed artist” character) communicates that his true nature is not extinguished. The colors he wears signify the creativity and passion still burning inside him, battling the pain. Penélope Cruz’s costumes in the flashbacks are also meticulously done: as Salvador’s mother Jacinta in the 1960s, she wears simple floral house-dresses and a headscarf typical of a rural Spanish matriarch, but of course Almodóvar chooses a particularly photogenic red and white gingham for one dress, making her stand out in memory like a saint of domestic labor. Pain and Glory was received with widespread acclaim, with many critics remarking on how it felt like Almodóvar coming full circle. The visual parallels to his own past works and to his personal life did not go unnoticed. For instance, reviewers pointed out that Salvador’s apartment in the film, with its “exquisite clutter of art”, felt like stepping directly into Almodóvar’s mind, a “metaphorical museum” of his influences . The film earned Oscar nominations and cemented Almodóvar’s legacy as not just a storyteller but a visual storyteller, one whose mature work uses design and color to evoke introspection and nostalgia just as earlier works used them to provoke and dazzle.
In recent years, Almodóvar has continued to explore new territories while keeping his visual signature intact, even as he steps beyond the feature film format. In 2020, he released The Human Voice, a short film starring Tilda Swinton – notably, his first work in English. This 30-minute piece, based on Jean Cocteau’s monodrama, is essentially a one-woman show and thus heavily reliant on visual design to carry emotional weight. Almodóvar used this opportunity to create what is essentially a theatrical art installation on film. The set is a single stylized apartment where Swinton’s character waits for a call from her ex-lover – but unlike a realistic apartment, this one exists in a soundstage with surreal elements. The floor is a shiny reflective surface (on which the character’s red dress pools dramatically), and the backdrop is an enormous wall of shelves filled with dozens of meticulously arranged items – books, jars, artwork – all in coordinated colors. When Swinton’s character steps outside, we see that the “apartment” is actually a set within an empty warehouse, emphasizing her emotional isolation. The color scheme is classic Almodóvar: the interior is an “oasis of primary colors, Surrealist art, and plush furnishings” . Rich emerald greens, bold blues, and above all a burning red dominate the view. Swinton herself first appears in a blood-red Balenciaga gown, as striking as any costume Almodóvar has ever put on a leading lady . This gown (a piece from Balenciaga’s collection by Demna Gvasalia) flows to the ground and gives Swinton an imposing, almost regal presence even as her character is emotionally crumbling. Over the course of the short, she changes into a chic black suit with a red top – a showstopper look by Dries Van Noten – and later wields an axe while wearing high-fashion couture . The juxtaposition of violence and couture is a very Almodóvarian image (recalling, say, the glamorous gun-toting of Matador or the fashion-show murder in Pret-à-Porter which he cameoed in). Tilda Swinton, a fashion icon in her own right, noted at the New York Film Festival that working on The Human Voice was like entering Almodóvar’s closet and psyche: “Everybody in Pedro’s films dressed not only for each other but for Pedro!” she remarked , highlighting how the director’s personal aesthetic vision drives every costume choice. Indeed, in The Human Voice, one feels that every piece of furniture, every gown and accessory was handpicked by Almodóvar as an extension of his taste – which it was. The short was praised as a visual feast. Critics commented that it was “impossible to take your eyes off” Swinton and her surroundings, as her outfits and the set around her create a hypnotic dance of color and form . Though brief, The Human Voice encapsulated Almodóvar’s core visual tenets: a heightened reality where set decoration and costume paint the emotional landscape. The New Yorker’s critic described it as “an operatic explosion of color and feeling in a minimalist scenario,” which could describe much of Almodóvar’s work, but here stripped to its essence.
In 2021, Almodóvar returned to feature filmmaking with Parallel Mothers, a drama that again places two women and their intertwined fates at its center. Parallel Mothers is set in contemporary Spain, and while it deals with weighty themes (motherhood, historical memory of the Spanish Civil War), it is visually one of Almodóvar’s more naturalistic films. Yet “naturalistic” by Almodóvar standards still means carefully orchestrated design and pops of style. The Madrid apartments of the two mothers (played by Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit) are realistically cozy but also, in line with his practice, meticulously decorated homes where every color and object seems considered . Janis (Cruz’s character) is a professional photographer, and her apartment reflects an artistic eye: warm earth-tone walls, tasteful modern furniture, sunlight streaming through large windows onto patterned rugs and a gallery of black-and-white photos on the wall. In contrast, Ana (Milena Smit), the younger mother from a more troubled background, has a bedroom plastered with teen posters and a bit of disarray – until her life becomes intertwined with Janis’s, bringing her into Janis’s more ordered, color-coordinated world. A notable sequence involves Janis doing a photo shoot in a kitchen; she wears the now-famous Dior T-shirt that reads “We Should All Be Feminists” while casually cooking . This very specific wardrobe choice (a direct reference to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s feminist slogan, popularized in Dior’s 2017 collection) immediately roots the film in the now and aligns with its themes of female solidarity. It also got commentators talking – it’s not often one sees a character in a highbrow art film wearing a statement T-shirt from a recent fashion line, but Almodóvar integrated it seamlessly, using Cruz’s star power to pull it off. Costume designer Bina Daigeler balanced Janis’s style as both effortless and aspirational: Janis is often in ribbed knit dresses and cozy cardigans that radiate a casual glamour, hinting at her maturity and confidence . In one scene, Janis attends an exhumation of a mass grave (a serious subplot of the film) wearing a subdued black outfit – Almodóvar lets the gravity of that scene dictate a pause in vibrant fashion, showing his sensitivity to tone. Meanwhile, Ana’s style evolution is telling: initially she’s a rebellious teen in faded jeans and edgy streetwear (some Miu Miu jackets thrown in to signify her trendy side), but as she spends time with Janis, her clothing becomes softer, more maternal . By the film’s end, both women appear strong and stylish in their own distinct ways, reflecting mutual growth. The production design in Parallel Mothers stays in service of the characters – kitchens full of fruits and flowers (Almodóvar loves populating kitchens with colorful produce, a symbol of domestic life’s richness), baby rooms in gentle pastel shades, and striking pieces of art (like a large modern painting in Janis’s living room) that underscore the characters’ cultured environments. If Parallel Mothers feels slightly less visually loud than some Almodóvar films, it is perhaps due to its thematic focus on truth and reconciliation; however, it still contains arresting images that only Almodóvar could compose. For example, one shot frames Cruz in a doorway surrounded by vibrant red and yellow walls as she hears devastating news – the color literally closing in on her as a visual metaphor for panic and alarm. Critics warmly received Parallel Mothers, often noting how Almodóvar’s direction allowed the performances and story to shine without overt distraction. Yet, the subtle efficacy of the design was acknowledged: The Hollywood Reporter noted that Almodóvar’s “color coding and design are as precise as ever” and that the film’s visual allure supports its emotional core. The continued presence of long-time collaborators – Antxón Gómez in production design, Bina Daigeler on costumes, José Luis Alcaine as cinematographer – means that by this point, Almodóvar’s team operates like a finely tuned orchestra, with the director as the conductor ensuring every hue and fabric note is in harmony.
As of mid-decade 2020s, Almodóvar shows no signs of abandoning his visual passions. In 2023, he ventured into the Western genre with the short film Strange Way of Life, another project that garnered attention not just for its content (a queer cowboy romance starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal) but for its fusion of cinema and fashion: it was co-produced by the house of Saint Laurent, whose creative director Anthony Vaccarello personally designed the costumes. This kind of collaboration – a luxury fashion brand producing a film – highlights how Almodóvar’s standing in visual culture transcends traditional cinema. Vaccarello was reportedly eager to work with Almodóvar, as the director’s aesthetic sensibility aligns with the bold statements of haute couture. In Strange Way of Life, one can see why: the two cowboys wear impeccable, stylized Western wear, from tailored leather jackets to silk neckerchiefs, that simultaneously evoke classic Spaghetti Westerns and high-fashion runway looks. The film’s desert landscapes (shot in Almería, Spain, where classic Westerns were filmed) provide a raw natural backdrop that Almodóvar contrasts with the almost polished, immaculately fitted costumes – bridging cinematic nostalgia with contemporary style. Though only 30 minutes, the short reportedly contains frames reminiscent of paintings (a sunset-hued sky over two men in wide-brim hats and flowing dusters, composed as carefully as a fashion editorial). By embracing the Western, Almodóvar was able to inject his love of color into a typically dusty palette – one insider review noted that he uses a refreshingly bright color for the inside lining of Pascal’s character’s jacket, a secret splash of teal visible only when the coat flaps. It’s a minor detail, but such details are the stuff of Almodóvar’s visual storytelling, conveying perhaps the hidden tenderness in a tough cowboy.
Looking over Almodóvar’s full filmography, it becomes clear that his contribution to cinema as a visual storyteller is unique and immeasurable. Few directors have so consistently and inventively used art direction, set decoration, and costume design to convey narrative and character. Critics and scholars often discuss auteurs in terms of recurring themes or cinematic techniques, but with Almodóvar one must talk about recurring colors, textures, and fashions as well. An “Almodóvar film” is virtually a genre of its own, synonymous with a certain saturated color palette and fearless mixing of stylistic references. So recognized is his style that the term “Almodóvariano” (or “Almodovarian”) has entered critical language to describe anything reminiscent of his films – be it a particularly melodramatic plot with humorous undertones, or an eye-popping interior design style rich in kitsch. As production designer Antxón Gómez observed, after so many movies “it can be said that there is an ‘Almodovarian’ style in decor. It is eclectic, colorful and very loud all at once.” That loud eclecticism, however, has matured into something also capable of subtlety and poetry. Almodóvar’s visual language has always served the characters first: whether it’s the “delightfully kitsch” ensembles of Pepa in Women on the Verge that externalize her frenzied emotional state , or the “impeccably-tailored” outfits of a dance teacher in Talk to Her reflecting discipline and grace , or the homely floral prints and warm kitchen sets of Volver enveloping its characters in a embrace of tradition and family , every design choice adds a layer to storytelling. His longtime costume designers (José María de Cossío, Paco Delgado, Bina Daigeler, among others) and production designers (Ferrán Sánchez, Antxón Gómez) have each brought their expertise to realize his visions, but it’s universally noted that Almodóvar himself is deeply involved in these aesthetic decisions. Tilda Swinton’s jokey comment that actors in his films dress “for Pedro” is more than a quip – it is the reality of a director with an exacting eye for the visual composition . Penélope Cruz has often spoken about how Almodóvar might adjust a prop or a piece of wardrobe on set to perfect the color balance of a shot, and how she has learned to trust his vision completely because those adjustments often make the difference between a plain image and an iconic one. This meticulous care is evident in how consistently striking and cohesive his films are visually.
Critics over the years have celebrated Almodóvar’s visuals even when they debated his narratives. In the 1980s, some dismissed the early films as style-over-substance, but many, like French critic Serge Daney, recognized that the style was the substance – Almodóvar was saying something new about Spanish identity and desire through the clash of neon colors and kitsch decor. Philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek once pointed out that Almodóvar’s melodramas turn the excess of style into an emotional truth: when a character’s world is falling apart, Almodóvar might literally show the world (through set and costume) in disarray or extreme contrast, externalizing inner feelings in tangible form. This visual externalization connects him to great melodrama directors like Douglas Sirk, whom he admires. Sirk used color and design expressively in films like All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Almodóvar has essentially updated that practice for modern sensibilities, adding his own irreverent twist. Almodóvar himself has cited Alfred Hitchcock as a master of visual storytelling who influences him: “Whenever I bump into one of his films on TV, I can’t stop watching. The color in my movies is very Caribbean, and it has a Baroque quality – the same as Hitchcock’s,” he once noted . It’s an intriguing comparison, linking his flamboyant color schemes to the lush Technicolor of films like Vertigo or Marnie. Indeed, like Hitchcock, Almodóvar understands the psychological power of color and detail – think of Hitchcock’s obsession with a particular suit for Kim Novak, or a key in a wineglass; Almodóvar has his red dresses, his telephone earrings, his gazpacho laced with sleeping pills. These visual icons linger in audience’s minds.
Almodóvar’s work has also been embraced by the fashion and art worlds, reflecting its impact on visual culture. Major museums such as MoMA in New York and the Design Museum in London have featured exhibits on his films’ designs. For instance, the costumes of Julieta and Volver were displayed as part of exhibitions on film fashion, demonstrating how his characters’ looks set trends (Penélope Cruz’s 60s-inspired dresses in Volver sparked a revival of vintage floral dresses in Spain). The luxury brand collaborations in his recent shorts further blur the boundary – he’s one of the few directors whose film announcements can appear in Vogue as well as Variety. Vogue itself, in listing Almodóvar’s most stylish films, remarked that “it’s his maximalist visual style that makes him a cultural mainstay” , underlining that beyond the awards and scripts, it’s the look of Almodóvar’s cinema that has permeated global pop culture. Designers like Marc Jacobs and Gucci’s Alessandro Michele have cited Almodóvar’s films as inspiration for collections (with Michele even styling a Gucci campaign in the colorful, campy spirit of Women on the Verge).
Yet, crucially, Almodóvar’s visuals are never empty spectacle; they always serve narrative and emotion. His films can be as bright as a bouquet or as dark as a Gothic painting, depending on the story’s needs. As scholar Paul Julian Smith wrote, Almodóvar’s genius is in “constructing a visual language where décor and dress become expressive devices as potent as dialogue” . In Almodóvar’s hands, a living room can be a portrait of a character’s soul, a dress can be a plot twist, and a color can carry a memory. He once humorously noted that “In all the movies there are vases, with or without flowers, and sofas upholstered in warm tones like reds and bright oranges. We try not to repeat ourselves. If an object has been used in one film, it won’t appear in the next one.” . This quote from Antxón Gómez reveals an important aspect of Almodóvar’s artistry: even as he maintains a consistent style, he is always looking to reinvent details so each film’s world is distinct. That level of detail-orientation – down to banning a prop from re-use to keep each universe unique – is part of what makes his filmography so rich for analysis. It’s also why his work has been received so favorably by critics of visual culture; he invites and rewards close reading of mise-en-scène.
Pedro Almodóvar’s unique contribution to cinema as a visual storyteller lies in his alchemical fusion of high art and pop art, of emotional sincerity and flamboyant artifice. He can make us laugh at a kitschy decoration one moment and cry over a perfectly composed frame the next. No matter how outrageous the pattern or how clashing the colors, there is deep empathy and humanism underlying his choices – the style always serves the story of human hearts in conflict or communion. As one critic put it, Almodóvar creates “the combination [of hyper-real art direction and raw human feeling] that provides the audience with an intense hit of human life in all its color”, making the mundane feel magical and the outrageous feel strangely truthful . Across the decades, he has evolved from a brash provocateur into a mature master, but without ever losing the vivid palette of his imagination. His films continue to be vibrant canvases of life, where every color, costume, and piece of furniture speaks. In Almodóvar’s cinema, the walls really do talk – and they tell the most extraordinary stories.