In honour of this glamorous event I splashed out on the premium balcony seats at the Duke of York's.
From the trailer that I'd seen the previous week I was expecting the usual mix of saturated colours and campness prevalent in much of his work, together with a return to the comedy of his earlier films.
The film begins with sun drenched shots of the taxiway at Madrid's Barajas Airport interspersed with 80s style graphic imagery and an upbeat 80s style soundtrack. The feel was very much like the UK British sitcoms of the 1970s that were stretched into feature films, or a later Carry On film such as Carry on Camping.
First up was a funny little vignette featuring Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz as ground crew readying a plane for take-off.
The action then moved to the business class section and cockpit of the plane itself, where it remained until the final few minutes of the film, with a landing at the white elephant mothballed airport at La Mancha.
The film is funny, bawdy and incredibly smutty with a hilarious musical number halfway through; the underlying storyline is not dissimilar to the slapstick / disaster genre of the Airplane films of the 80s.
In the Q&A Almodóvar explained that he was comparing the optimism of Spain in the 80s, newly freed from dictatorship and about to enter the EEC with the current financial crash. Sadly it was not one of Almodóvar's better efforts and the comedy combined with social commentary was a bit clunky. A fun night out but I'm not sure it was worth the hype.
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