THE LAST DREAM

The noted Spanish director delivers a series of contes à clef, giving his merrily transgressive takes on life a good literary workout.

“This collection of stories (I call everything a story, I don’t distinguish between genres) demonstrates the intimate relationship between what I write, what I film, and what I live,” writes Almodóvar, the creator of films such as All About My Mother and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The declaration is a touch cryptic, but what follows is often strange and sometimes shocking, as with his opening story, “The Visit,” in which the putative sister of a man molested by priests in boyhood confronts one of them; he accuses her of dressing like a prostitute, to which she retorts, “I don’t particularly like the way you dress either.” For those who know Almodóvar’s films, the surprise ending won’t come entirely as a surprise. In another story, an actor, León, desperate for a project, contemplates a top-to-bottom rewriting of the classic L’Amore, Roberto Rossellini’s adaptation of a play by Jean Cocteau, its star the luminous Anna Magnani; in León’s vision, it will become a love story between men: “The lover is bisexual....Bisexuality is the great neglected topic of the sexual revolution.” It doesn’t play out. Perhaps the most eccentric tale portrays an aristocratic vampire who comes calling on, again, a priest whose blood flows after self-flagellation; says the vampire, who could have sunk his teeth into the scenario but professes no interest in “vampirizing,” “I am like your mystics; I like to be alone, left to follow my own devices and desires.” Jesus, Barabbas, the singer Chavela, Isabella and Ferdinand, and, yes, the vampire all show up in these oddly delightful stories, no one doing quite what they’re expected to do.

Sometimes surreal, sometimes prurient, sometimes discomfiting—and every page worth reading.