Los amantes pasajeros (literally, "the passenger lovers" or "the fleeting lovers") has more in common with Almodóvar's earlier, black sexual comedies of the 80s and early 90s, like Tie me Up, Tie Me Down!, than more recent melodramas like Volver or Broken Embraces.
The plot is simple: passengers on board a flight from Madrid to Mexico City start to get to know each other as they find out that there's a problem with the plane.
It opens with huge neon graphics, a frantic Spanish guitar rendition of Für Elise, and pleasingly ridiculous cameos from Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, who pile on the Andalucian lisp and are clearly having a great time.
Javier Cámara, most well-known to British audiences from Talk to Her, plays camp, drunk, then camp and drunk together, beautifully: the whole cast give fantastically breathy, gushing performances.
For an Almodóvar nerd, it's also gorgeously self-referential. Javier Cámara running through the ingredients of his Agua de Valencia, and the effects it has on the passengers, is straight from Carmen Maura's gazpacho confession in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
The film is released in the UK on 3 May 2013 with the English title I'm So Excited!, after the song by the Pointer Sisters. Here's why.
