ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that, far from being repressed, there was an active desire for homosexuality in Pedro Almodovar's cinema that facilitated its distribution abroad, as early as La ley del deseo. It examines the two stories that announce the queer current by which Almodovar will be well known, abroad at least: 'La anciana' and 'La visita'. Almodovar's sympathy for and empathy with such mature female characters are distinctive and transparent. The sympathetic empathy of a twenty-something gay man for a seventy-year-old married lady is here combined with elements that now clearly belong to transnational camp: the divaesque performances and costumes that hark back to an era far indeed from the self-conscious modernity of contemporary Madrid. As Almodovar's subsequent career was to show, a genuine love for and admiration of heroines of a certain age will be a consistent feature of his signature style.
