10/07/2012 - Yesterday, July 9, shooting kicked off in Madrid for the Spanish director's 19th film, to feature Javier Cámara, Cecilia Roth, Lola Dueñas, and Raúl Arévalo among others.

After the gravity of Broken Embraces [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pedro Almodóvar
film profile] (2009) and The Skin I Live In [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pedro Almodóvar
film profile] (2011), Pedro Almodóvar has decided to return to comedy, a genre with which he broke in the 1980s, with his new film Los amantes pasajeros (lit. "Passenger/fleeting lovers"), for which shooting started yesterday, July 9, in Madrid. Described by the latter as "a light, very light comedy", the film will be set almost entirely in a plane, which explains the pun in the film's title: 'pasajeros' means both 'passengers' and 'fleeting' (which is why the director from La Mancha has decided that the film should be titled I'm So Excited in countries where a translation would not keep this double meaning).

As is usual with Almodóvar's films, little is known about Los amantes pasajeros's plot. In an interview with TVE, the director explained that the story is set mostly from the moment a plane breaks down to the moment it manages to make an emergency landing.

From a persistent leakage of information via mainstream and social media, we know that the film will have an ensemble cast made up of Javier Cámara, Cecilia Roth, Lola Dueñas, Raúl Arévalo, Carlos Areces, Antonio de la Torre, Hugo Silva, Miguel Ángel Silvestre, and Blanca Suárez, with cameo appearances by Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz, Carmen Machi, and Paz Vega.

The film is produced by the director's brother, Agustín Almodóvar, for El Deseo. Recently, during the Madrid de Cine - Spanish Film Screenings celebrations, the producer confirmed that Los amantes pasajeros had already been sold worldwide and that these pre-sales have completely funded the film, without any need for any financial contribution from the Spanish market.

Los amantes pasajeros is set to be released in spring and is already from now, as is usual for Almodóvar, a candidate for the next edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

(Translated from Spanish)