There’s an old (and thankfully, largely obsolete) phrase that was once frequently used to describe homosexual men: “Women Haters.”
Happily, that term is now far more frequently (and accurately) used to describe heterosexual men who hate women.
However, if anyone has any doubts about how gay men feel about women, they need go no further than Pedro Almodovar’s current film, Volver.
Almodovar is 1) Spain’s unquestioned master of cinema and is 2) widely known to be gay.
Just sit down and watch this movie and you will realize that few men on the planet love women more than Pedro Almodovar does. He creates an earth goddess out of Penelope Cruz, celebrating her body, her spirit and her brains in equal measure.
There’s an amazing shot in the film taken while Cruz is washing dishes. The camera is placed directly above her, so the audience is staring straight down at her (remarkable) boobs. How many other gay directors, I wonder, would put together such a shot? (I mean, besides John Waters . . . and then the boobs would be on a man.)
And as Penelope’s indominatable character, Raimunda, struggles with simultaneous challenges involving murder, ghosts and possible financial ruin, Almodovar allows her to be something rarely found in American movies: a woman who’s a complete person, not simply a plot device or a reflection of a male character’s needs or quirks.
(By the way, those of you who have only seen Penelope Cruz in American films may be unprepared for how fantastic she is in Volver).
Volver is no fluke, either. Celebrating womanhood is a theme that runs through all of Almodovar’s films, from Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) to All About My Mother (1999).
Watching the wonderful movie reminded me of an amusing moment I had recently while playing the online game World of Warcraft. I’m quite “out” in my online life, and a fellow player expressed mild surprise after hearing me compliment a woman. “Oh, didn’t you know, WolfKiller, ” I said nonchalantly, “that gay men adore women?”
