It is the movie director Pedro Almodovar introduced me to Spain .
In his movie he gives me the impression that Spain/Barcelona is the country of color (besides a lot of gorgeous and melancholy drag queens, gay guys and women; the innocent young Antonio Banderas and my favourite actress Penelope Cruz...). Each time when I watch his movie at home or in the cinema, it is a challenge to my home's TV set, to the cinema's projector and my visual receptors. I am so excited by his use of color that I promise myself if I save enough money for a trip to Europe, I must first go to Spain. I also attended the Spanish complementary course last year all because of Almodovar's film. However, I still can not pronounce the alphabet 'rr' and I have already given the 'un poco' Spanish that I learnt back to the teacher. Sigh!
Here I listed out sixteen posters of Almodovar's film (I have only watched ten of them):
It shows that primary and secondary colours in high chroma or at least in constant chroma; in medium value without tints, shades and tones. Monochromatic, achromatic and analogic schemes do not exist in his dictionary. Fatiguing to the eye, but exciting to watch.
Actually, not many hues are used in the posters, it is about the high intensity of the colors that give the passionate feeling in Almodovar's films. This is the most fascinating element to me and always makes me feel that Spain is as colorful as in the director's eye.
And definitely, a lot of people love Almodovar's color palette, I found this simple and representative palelette on the internet.
A scene in Volver, the red blouse in contrast with the blue-green wall, it exhibits brilliance; and protrudes the main actress. The color in the scene is also arranged in certain sequence. Turquoise and beige are scattered around red i.e. each color appears in a certain order to succession, keeps the same position in each repeat, and leads the eye in the direction of progression.
Sometimes we may use color to tell a story, without clumsy explanations or descriptions, color could have it all. Of course, every bits of color must be used precisely, and the most important thing is that we must let go and can not play safe.
