The Skin We Live In: Intersectional Reflections on Queer Aging in Pedro Almodóvar’s Cinema

Abstract

This research focuses on the role of queer aging in Pedro Almodóvar’s cinema. It does it through explicit approaches to this topic, such as Pain and Glory (2019) and Strange Way of Life (2023), but also through collateral depictions in every single film that he has released since he turned 60 years old. Thus, this paper will also cover The Skin I Live In (2011), I’m So Excited (2013), Julieta (2016), the short film The Human Voice (2020) and Parallel Mothers (2021).  Based on sociological theories about aging (Butler, Cumming and Henry, or Rowe and Khan, among others) and, more specifically, about queer aging (Kimmel and Gimeno, among others) this research analyzes the Spanish filmmaker as an agent of visibilization for this reality, that has been traditionally silenced from both the mainstream and the LGBTQ+ community. This analysis is based on Almodovar’s movies, writing pieces, and media appearances and establishes a dialogue with the forementioned theoretical framework. Simultaneously, this topic emerges as the last but not least taboo that Pedro Almodóvar breaks in his transgressive body of work. Also, his journey as an auteur and as a gay older adult, represents the specificities of his queer generation: interiorized agism, accelerated aging or discrimination fatigue. His movies and his public statements, on the other hand, talk about unresolved griefs and how that pushes him and his creative work to a new level of emancipation from social and artistic expectations linked to the «almodovarian» label.