Charlie Smith
LEGENDARY Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar has been phoning up his pals to check on their libidos during lockdown.
In an essay penned for IndieWire the 70-year-old Dolor y Gloria director revealed he had been studying the effects quarantine has on sexual desire.
“My libido has abandoned me since the isolation started. I suppose that sadness and worry have displaced erotic fantasies,” he said.
Almodovar, who is originally from Ciudad Real, said he had enquired after ‘a number of friends, male and female, in order to check on the state of their sexual appetites’.
He added: “Apart from one who was desperate and told me he’d arranged online to meet with different people in supermarkets for a f**k in the toilets, in general the pandemic and its resulting isolation has reduced the erotic needs of the majority of people I phoned.”
As well as his research, Almodovar said he had been passing the time by watching films, such as the romance The End of the Affair (1999), starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore.
Almodovar’s successful 2019 was capped off at the Oscars this year when his Dolor y Gloria starring Antonio Banderas received two nominations.
Banderas was up for Best Actor, while the movie was also nominated for Best International Feature Film.
Almodovar’s essay was translated into English by Mar Diestro-Dopido.
