I began playing the Ten Films in Ten Days game on Facebook. The instructions were: ‘I was nominated by Andrew Grimes Griffin – One movie a day for 10 days. No explanation, no reviews, just the poster of the movie that greatly influenced my film-loving life.’ However, the no-explanation bit annoyed people so much that I decided to offer it, and since I am writing them, I thought I´d also share them here:

Day 5:
I was nominated by Andrew Grimes Griffin – One movie a day for 10 days. The no explanation bit is annoying people so: I saw this at the Montreal Film Festival when it came out and was completely delighted and shocked it came from Spain. I then went to the Toronto Film Festival and they had a mini retrospective of his work and I was so excited about that that I went to Madrid and interviewed Almodóvar at his flat. He was watching on replay the bit in Written on the Wind where MeryLee goes up the stairs and does that frenzied dancing no one who´s seen the film has forgotten. I annoyed him by mentioning I liked Gutierrez-Aragon´s films. The result was published in Descant, a literary magazine I think no longer exists. This then led to me doing an MA on Almodóvar and The Law of Desire with Thomas Elsaesser at UEA, in the midst of which I also remember going to Spain and with great difficulty getting all his early films from his production company to aid with my research. So this film is what led to an academic career, and the irony is that the schedules and finances of academic life, or at least mine, never permitted me to do that kind of research again, the being able to travel, interview, and then having a year of doing nothing but reading, seeing and writing. Voila.

José Arroyo