The film’s metaphor is the eclipse, the idea of two stars that align and their light is apparently extinguished, but in that new convergence they acquire a new luminosity that is much more ardent and intense… For me, the eclipse represents the atmosphere in which all the characters develop, where they are all half hypnotized by what is happening, revolving around the couple who attracts them, [who] represent a great bullfight in which the roles are interchangeable, depending on the moment. — Pedro Almodóvar
In MATADOR—Almodóvar’s fifth feature film—two circling protagonists take sexual pleasure in killing. Diego (Nacho Martínez) is a former torero turned bullfighting instructor, forced to turn elsewhere for satisfaction since his retirement from the arena: “To stop killing was like to stop living.” María (Assumpta Serna) is an attorney who who has perfected the art of murdering her bedroom partners at the point of orgasm with a knife thrust to the back of the neck. For the director, the fable’s heightened melodrama and fatalistic outcome demanded an aesthetic break from the everyday eccentricities of his first works:
I’m fed up being linked to seediness. Beauty in all its manifestations is going to be key in MATADOR. That of the light, the sets, of its actors… It’s my most abstract film… the farthest removed from naturalism and objective reality.
As part of its series Past Present 2025: A Celebration of Film Preservation, the Academy Museum presents the United States premiere of the 4K restoration of this underseen Almodóvar masterwork. See info and links below.
MATADOR
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Written by Almodóvar and Jesús Ferrero
U.S. Restoration Premiere
Saturday, December 20, at 7:30 pm
David Geffen Theater
Academy Museum
6067 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles
academymuseum.org/present-past-2025-a-celebration-of-film-preservation
Pedro Almodóvar quotations from Nuria Vidal, “An Interview with Pedro Almodóvar,” in Vidal, The Films of Pedro Almodóvar (Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales, 1988); reprinted in The Pedro Almodóvar Archives, ed. Paul Duncan with Bárbara Peiró (Taschen, 2011).
Pedro Almodóvar, Matador (1986), from top: Assumpta Serna; Nacho Martínez and Eva Cobo; Antonio Banderas; Martínez; Serna: Cobo; Martínez (foreground).
The 2025 4K restoration was produced by Mercury Films and supervised by Agustín Almodóvar in Madrid.
Film stills by Jorge Aparicio, courtesy and © LolaFilms and Mercury Films.
