“I want you to suffer what I suffer:” Adaptation, film genre and violence in Live Flesh (1997) by Pedro Almodóvar
“Yo quiero que tú sufras lo que yo sufro”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/fotocinema.32.2026.21523Keywords:
Pedro Almodovar, Ruth Rendell, Live Flesh, adaptation, violence, film genreAbstract
This article examines the film adaptation of Ruth Rendell’s novel Live Flesh (1986) in Carne trémula (1997), exploring its narrative transformations and shifting engagement with film genre conventions. It analyses the malleability of the generic palimpsest, highlighting how Almodóvar integrates elements of neo-noir, melodrama, and psychological thriller into his reinterpretation. In this regard, the article addresses the adaptation strategies and the film’s degree of autonomy from the novel, both in terms of narrative structure and character construction, which oscillates between two paradigmatic extremes (cinéma d’auteur vs film genre.) Furthermore, the article scrutinises the representation of violence through different typologies—state violence (Francoism), institutional violence (police), and symbolic violence (gender and masculinity)—revealing the ways in which Almodóvar subverts certain conventions of film noir. The article also explores urban space as a narrative agent, reflecting Madrid’s transformation from the final decades of Francoism to late capitalist modernity in the 1990s. Finally, by emphasising its intertextual dimension and the tension between fatalism and redemption in Almodóvar’s poetics, Carne trémula is pondered as an amalgamation of genres that remains firmly committed to discursive expansion and the director’s distinctive stylistic vision.
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