Matador

I am not sure what to expect when the opening scene is a man masturbating to torture porn, a term that was probably not even invented in 1988.

From there we go to alternating clips of Antonio Banderas asking the ex-bullfighter Nacho Martínez about women and he compares getting a woman to bullfighting, while we watch someone do exactly that. We are no, of course, prepared for the necrophilia twist in that encounter.

We find our boy, Antonio, and he is a boy in this film, in a strict Catholic household. I would have to guess that his mother was Opus Dei. He attempts to rape his neighbor and confesses to four murders which we know he did not do. This is just Almodóvar's take on religion and repression. He revisits that subjects again in the film, so it must me a theme for him.

But, then the story shifts to Nacho and Assumpta Serna, with Eva Cobo in a minor role. This is where the story gets interesting with the police trying to solve the four murders and the real murderers trying to lay it on Antonio.

It gets bizarre at the end with Antonio seeing the killers in his mind and leading the police to them. But, they arrive too late as the climax of sex and death occurs simultaneous with an eclipse. How weird is that?