PROFILES

A first for this anniversary Festival: the Cannes jury is headed by a Spanish filmmaker, one who is a regular but has never won its supreme accolade.

Don Pedro doesn't do grudges! Following his nomination to lead the jury, the 67-year-old director expressed his joy at "celebrating the Film Festival's 70th anniversary in this very privileged role. I am grateful, honoured and a bit overwhelmed. I am aware of the responsibility entailed by being president of the jury and I hope to be up to the job. I can only tell you I'll devote myself body and soul to this task that is both a privilege and a pleasure." Thierry Frémaux, the Festival's general delegate, describes Almodóvar as "a flamboyant icon of Spanish cinema and a filmmaker famous the world over". He is in any case a regular contributor to the Festival, which has twice honoured him with awards but never with its supreme accolade. The Palme d'Or, object of all desires, could have been his last year, in this journalist's personal opinion, as Julieta, his 20th film, is the Spanish director's finest so far.

Cannes a testing ground
Pedro Almodóvar's Cannes connection started in 1982 when the self-taught filmmaker brought his second feature film, Labyrinth of Passion, to the Semaine de la Critique incognito. Six years later the success of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in his own country and abroad shot him into the limelight. In 1992, the Cannes Festival invited him to sit on the jury headed by Gérard Depardieu. From 1999 Cannes became something of his testing ground, with five of his films having been selected for competition: first All About My Mother, which won Best Director Palm then other international awards, followed by Volver, 2006 Best Screenplay, Broken Embraces in 2009, The Skin I Live In in 2011 with Antonio Banderas as a Frankenstein surgeon, and Julieta last year. Not to mention the 60th Festival's poster depicting the "Caballero" (his second family name) with other Croisette faithfuls Jane Campion, Wong Kar-wai, Juliette Binoche.... Forgotten by Cannes? Hardly! But that elusive Palme d’Or triggered a fanciful rumour about Almodóvar's supposed obsession with it, something he vehemently denied to our fellow journalists at So Films in May 2016: "I read somewhere that I'm obsessed with the Palme d'Or. Whoever wrote that knows nothing about the making of films. I promise you there's no place in a filmmaker's head for such considerations. What's more, Cannes has always spoilt me!"

"Only cinema exists"
So what does go on in Almodóvar's head? After embodying the rebirth of Spanish cinema in the country's frenetic post-Franco era, over a 40-year career the director has created an iconoclastic, baroque, incandescent oeuvre, driven by an insatiable passion for female figures – and the actresses who play them – and the history of film. Today the Movida's spearhead adept at all-areas excess has calmed down and refocused: "My life now is extremely simple: I read, I watch films, I listen to music, I go for walks. Nothing else. And I make films. If I read, walk, listen to music and watch films it's to feed the stories I tell. Now only cinema exists," he told So Films. Being president of the 70th Cannes Film Festival's jury is going to make him a very happy man!

Par Mireille Sartore