I Can’t Sleep while an Almodovar Movie Plays

Sometimes I fall asleep when I watch a movie. Don’t get it wrong, the film doesn’t have to be bad for me to fall asleep. Let’s say, it is a childhood habit. When I could not sleep –I always go to bed early because my mother is a teacher- my father allowed me to watch TV while he was reading a book.

Little living room of our home in İstanbul was like a movie theater for me during my sleepless nights. I was waiting for the sleep to come in front of TV with worries that the world will come to its end unless I fall asleep, well it’s equivalent to the stairway to heaven back then. When I entered the living room, my dad was smiling and I sat on brown, beige-striped, wooden armchair. Let the sleep come!

I am writing this page while I am lying on my armchair in front of my old friend: TV. Contrary to as usual, I don’t wait for the sleep to come. My cat, Pıtır, is ill and I should follow it not to vomit its medication until morning.

I’m lucky since there is a guy that makes me awake till morning: Pedro Almodovar. Directors of the movies that never make me asleep. One and only, dear Spanish Almodovar. My dear Almodovar that has many awards; has written and directed many magnificent movies…even there are meals which were named after him.

Best-loved, great Spanish director Almodovar after Luis Buñuel… His movie characters include very vigorous women, transsexuals, transvestites, rapists, hit men but you never see their crimes and regrets but their humanities, frailties and hopes through the silver screen. So, we can have empathy and love them or don’t love them.

“Labyrinth of Passion” of 1982 was the first Almodovar movie that I had ever seen. The second half of 1990s; those were the days that I baby stepped from adolescence to adulthood. It was the “favorite” movie of a friend’s beloved sister who learnt psychology in Boğaziçi University.

It would surely be our favorite film, too. The movie was about a nymphomaniac named Sexilia, gay Islamist “terrorist” Sadec, the son of the emperor of Tiran, Riza and dry cleaner’s daughter Queti, it was like a Renaissance! Guys having sex, sex-addict women, cross-gender elder men, escapes and guns…. I learnt that day the director was the guy who dressed like a woman and applied a dark make-up. And I believed in Spanish movie and Almodovar very that day. 

I have watched “Matador”, “Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988), “High Heels” (1991), “The Flower of My Secret” (1995), “All About My Mother” (1999), “Talk to Her” (2002), “Bad Education” (2004), “Volver” (2006), “Broken Embraces” (2009), “The Skin I Live In” (2012) and many more…

I liked “Talk to Her” and “All About My Mother” most. My jaw fell to the ground with “The Skin I Live In”. I cried with “Bad Education” since my beloved director was telling his childhood.

I will watch “All About My Mother” tonight; God knows how many times I’ve watched it. Echoes from Federico García Lorca* to women, men, love, friendship and compassion. That film makes me say “Each woman is a mother, a player, a saint and a sinner inside and each man has a feminine side.”

I will never sleep tonight.

The film will be over, Pıtır the cat will be healed, Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim** will be played, we will be hurt and then recover, TV will always be on and there will be no sleep tonight…

Good morning. (GP/HK/BD)

* Federico García Lorca - Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director (1898-1936)

** Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim - Brazilian songwriter, composer, arranger, singer, and pianist/guitarist (1927-1994)

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