The films of Pedro Almodóvar teem with characters who at once are and are not alter egos of the director. In film after film, the Spanish auteur mines his past for alternative selves, telling and retelling formative stories from his own life, plumbing the depths of his memory while exploring other lives he might have led. What can Almodóvar’s work tell us about the quest for self-knowledge—for understanding who we are and who we might yet become? James Miller considers seven of Almodóvar’s most personal films, arguing that together they offer a revealing self-portrait of the director and his search for meaning. Beginning with Volver, Miller traces Almodóvar’s signature obsessions backward and forward through the director’s filmography. Deeply shaped by the counterculture of the 1960s—which arrived belatedly in Franco’s Spain—Almodóvar has long been fascinated by the exhilarating power and devastating limitations of artistic and sexual transgression. In rich readings, Miller shows how
