Amodovar - Explicit dialogue and ambiguous sexuality

Pedro Almodovar's upcoming comedy 'I'm so Excited',  starring Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, promises to be one of his most racy, the Spanish director said in the first in-depth interview on the film.

"There are dialogues that are a little embarrassing to listen to. Even for me. And I wrote them," Almodovar said in an interview with Spanish daily, 'El Mundo'. "Men don't usually speak so openly about sex as the characters. I think the male viewers are going to have more problems than the women. Because we men are more hypocritical - regardless of homosexual or heterosexual."

Almodóvar’s last movie, starring Banderas, was the Hitchcockian psychological thriller 'The Skin I Live In'. From the new trailer, 'I’m So Excited', looks like a return to the farcical comedy of his earlier movies, such as 'Labyrinth of Passion' and his breakout 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown'.

Almodovar said the film, which opens in Spain next week and in the US in June, serves up more than just laughs and "has a certain melancholy."

He added that 'I'm Excited' would "affect a lot of bisexuals," but only shows heterosexual relations on camera because "it's much more fun to talk about sex that to do it. And that's from someone who has shot some of the most explicit scenes. You can see it in people's eyes."

'I'm so Excited' is shot in an airplane that encounters technical failure as pilots and crew farcically try to set aside their own problems in the face of imminent danger to entertain and comfort passengers.

The film title come from The Pointer Sisters' song  'I’m So Excited'. Released last week, the trailer, with ’60s graphics in bright primary colours,  shows flight attendants bursting into a dance number right in the middle of their pre-flight safety demonstration.

Soon they're told by a psychic (played by Almodóvar favorite Lola Dueñas), that the flight will crash - a fact she predicts by feeling up the pilots’ crotches. To help deals with this news, the passengers resort to cocktails loaded with mescaline.

In the interview, Almodovar also spoke about the gloomy economic situation in Spain, the superiority complex of the rich, the social freedom and sexual liberation of the 1980s and political scandals that have come to light in the Spanish press.

But true to form, he defends the fuss his film may cause. "Controversy means people are alive. In any case, nowadays controversy means something else. A lot of taboos have changed."