PEDRO ALMODOVAR WASN'T ever going to let his big chance slip by. When his Bad Education became the first Spanish movie to open the Cannes Festival this year, the director was at his flamboyant best.
Surrounded by drag queens and the actresses who have populated his movies - including Carmen Maura and Victoria Abril - he took to the stage lip-synching and simulating a pole dance to Hey Big Spender. The whole Cannes experience, he says, was like a dream.
'People had told me the Cannes audience would be difficult, but they were very generous and tender,' he says. Cannes jury president Quentin Tarantino went as far as to say Bad Education was a 'f***ing masterpiece. I wish it had been part of the competition.'
But things haven't always been so peachy. When his 1999 film All About My Mother failed to win the coveted Palme d'Or in Cannes, Almodovar felt burnt by the experience, and vowed not to allow his films to compete again (even though he won the best director prize that year). His subsequent film, Talk to Her, wasn't part of the festival in any way.
But the wounds have healed, and this year he was back on the famous Croissette. 'I think it was a prize in itself to be chosen to open the Cannes Festival,' he says. Naturally, the director was concerned about what he'd wear on opening night.
'I spent two weeks worrying about my wardrobe,' he said at the time. 'You have no idea what it's like for a fifty-something Manchego director who Prada, Dior and Gucci want to dress, and they send you two or three tuxedos - and they don't quite fit.'
Chubby and grey-haired, the 52-year-old former enfant terrible has changed over the years. Critics praised his previous two films for displaying a new maturity, and for avoiding the campy frivolity of his earlier movies. With 1989's Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down! and 1991's High Heels, he was at his most vacuous. But he can't seem to escape his past, and in Bad Education he incorporates some of his earlier campy themes.
