Almodóvar, El Deseo and the Co-Production of Latin-American Space

Abstract

Pedro Almodóvar’s films of the last decade and a half, in combination with the series of six co-productions sponsored by his production company, El Deseo S. A., during the same period, exemplify what Néstor García Canclini describes as the co-production of a transnational Hispanic identity (1995: 130). The objective of this essay is to explore the cultural politics that informs this particular version of transnational filmmaking, first by probing the implications of the strategy through which Almodóvar’s recent films stabilize a mode of address directed to both Spanish and Latin American audiences; second, by examining the relation between his increasing emphasis on Latin American cultural tropes and El Deseo’s collaboration with Latin American auteurs beginning in 2000.