<blockquote>I don’t know why I am more interested in women…and I don’t want to know why.</blockquote> <br>By his own admission, Pedro Almodóvar is fascinated with women in his work. His films denote a preoccupation with the struggles that women uniquely face and, whilst the stories he chooses to tell are varied, it is always female narratives that he chooses to expose.<br> <br><em>Volver</em> (2006), one of his most acclaimed films, starring Penelope Cruz, explores the perspectives of three different generations of women – Raimunda (Cruz), her daughter Paula and Raimunda’s mother, Irene, who appears in ghostly form throughout the film and, in fact, turns out to be alive and still watching over her children. Notably, the film’s major plot point surrounds the absentee fathers of both Raimunda and her daughter, which shifts the focus to women and, crucially, mothers. <br><br>The absentee father is also a trope that Almodóvar uses to expose the female voice in his films. <em>Todo Sobre Mi Madre</em> (1999) (starring Cecilia Roth) takes place through the eyes of yet another mother, Manuela (Roth) whose son is tragically killed and, as a result, takes it upon herself to find the father of her child. Notably, much of this film also focuses on the lives of transgender women and their experiences. <br><br>Almodóvar always chooses a diverse range of settings for his films, equally bizarre and fantastical, but regardless, it is always women in positions of conflict and pressure that seem to dominate his work.<br>