THE BLACKBOARD: Matador (1986)

Summary: Sex and violence merge

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is a neo-noir in Grant's list, a Spanish movie under the direction of Pedro Almodovar.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!! This movie is built totally around the identification of sex with violence, taking it to the extreme of two people killing each other at the height of sexual climax and ecstasy. Not only that, the male had killed two women (off screen) and the woman had killed several men, one on screen. She was attracted to the man, a former matador who had been gored and retired. Her fetish extended to collecting his garb and accouterments. She killed men in a way similar to how the matador kills the bull.

In the sample of Spanish films I've seen in the neonoir vein, it seems that Spanish cinema has a particular and peculiar thread in it of religion-sex-violence-blood-the supernatural- the color red-the mystical. It's like a hangover tradition from the Middle Ages of cardinals in red, the Inquisition, burning heretics, and bullfights (which began in 1133). These movies, including the Mexican, seem almost to be obsessed with passion and sexual passion. They make a point of the tantalizing nature of the sex. At any rate, that's my current impression of the sexual side of violence.

This goes quite a few miles beyond the noir "Gun Crazy" (1950), but the latter is the better for it by suggesting, not showing. When it's all shown, as in Matador (1986), with nothing left to the imagination, the feeling of "so what?" enters. Classic film noir already is in some sense a decadent form of expression, making heroes out of people with moral weaknesses and indicating cultural decline. A neo-noir like Matador that explicitly says that happiness comes from double death during sex, and the dialog does say this, is really showing cultural decline, a decline of values. The religious is shown in the movie via an obnoxious mother and it's extremely unflattering. The suggested superstitions of religion are replaced by the accurate visions of a faint-hearted, maternally hen-pecked, would-be matador, the young Antonio Banderas, whose mind-reading capacity is stimulated by a natural phenomenon -- an eclipse of the sun.

The movie is very engaging, but grows increasingly far-fetched as it goes along. The production design makes very good use of color and symbols, becoming rather giallo-like at times. It could be called a late giallo.