With this debut collection, film director Pedro Almodóvar delivers a tantalizing glimpse into his world, formed by twelve stories carefully selected from his personal writings dating from the late '60s to the present.
So much of the writing in this book is awkward and flat that I was briefly tempted to blame translator Frank Wynne for its infelicities, but a glance at the original Spanish text reveals that Wynne has crafted a workmanlike but accurate representation of Almodóvar’s prose ... The Pedro Almodóvar who emerges from these black-and-white pages is a mediocre writer. It is the heightened colors of the movie screen that reveal his undisputed genius. My imaginary bookseller should place this volume in the Film section, but no one should seek it out until after they’ve seen all of Almodóvar’s movies.
If The Last Dream’s unruliness comes as no surprise – it’s a mixed bag both in its form and its rewards – its occasional crystalline terseness very much does ... Raw, conversational ... Has its pleasures – some of them lurid, some rather poignant – though at no point does it suggest an artist who has hitherto missed his calling.
I was too often reminded of watching Falso Amor, a Spanish reality television show in which contestants guess whether pictures of their lovers committing adultery are real photographs, or deepfaked images. It was (presumably) meant to be a playful, meta-televisual idea: in reality, its blurring of distinctions was just confusing and unpleasant
