To hear some film aficionados tell it, melodrama is the cinematic equivalent of cheap beer: fine in a pinch, but kind of flat. Tell that to the great Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, who has proved with pictures like All About My Mother and Talk to Her that melodrama, in his expert hands, can be satisfyingly rich. Now comes a literary treat: The Last Dream, translated by Frank Wynne, a collection of previously unpublished melodramatic works of fiction, and autobiographical essays that are "snapshots of my life as I was living it, without any degree of distance." They're exactly what one would expect from Almodóvar, who gleefully flouts conventions of so-called morality with in-your-face works on homosexuality, religion, and more.
It's great, cheeky fun, with fictional pieces like "The Visit," in which a woman pays a call to a school for boys and tells the headmaster that she has "come to avenge" the way the school treated her brother; and "Too Many Gender Swaps," the story of a relationship between two aging men, an actor and a director, who mount a production of A Streetcar Named Desire in which the character of Blanche is now a man named Blanco. In "The Mirror Ceremony," a surreal cross between Bram Stoker and Leonora Carrington, a count with mysterious abilities wants to "retreat from the world" and live in a monastery. Autobiographical pieces include the titular entry, a tribute to Almodóvar's mother, who taught him "how reality needs to be complemented by fiction to make life easier." Devotees of Almodóvar's cinema won't be disappointed by this lively collection. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer