A marriage fracturing in The Flower of My Secret:
I’ve now rewatched all of Almodóvar’s films to The Flower of My Secret, and note that transvestites and/or transexuals appear in all of his films, without exception, often in important roles, often with cis women playing trans women or vice-versa (he deploys this interchangeability meaningfully). Even in this bit, which is really otherwise unnecessary to the story the film is telling, he finds a place for them. Almodóvar’s world is a world with Trans. This was of course also true of Warhol and Waters but they were underground and/or avant-garde. I can’t think of another mainstream figure, a pillar of European Art Cinema for the last forty years, of which this can be said.
José Arroyo
