Pedro Almodóvar y la muerte no-normativa: el ars moriendi en Matador (1986) y La habitación de al lado (2024)

Abstract

Pedro Almodóvar has developed an aesthetic and narrative exploration of death throughout his filmography, challenging the norms imposed by hegemonic culture. This research analyzes the two films the director has identified as centered on this theme -Matador (1986) and The Room Next Door (2024)- examining their differing perspectives shaped by the 36-year gap between them. In both, the filmmaker explores the ars moriendi from a transgressive standpoint, distancing himself from traditional conceptions of death as a tragic or redemptive event and instead proposing an ambiguous and poetic vision. Both films problematize the relationship with death while addressing the impact of social norms on the end of life. In Matador, death is observed through the lens of youth and passion, inscribing it within the world of bullfighting—a space symbolically tied to virility and ritualized violence. In The Room Next Door, Almodóvar revisits the theme of death from a contemporary and mature perspective, linking it to a friendly and considered yet still disruptive agreement: euthanasia. Cinema, in both films, emerges as a space of resistance against the antiseptic approach with which contemporary society tends to conceal death. Almodóvar thus suggests that cinema is not only a reflection of reality but also a tool that reveals death, offering alternative images to the normative death imposed by dominant culture.