Pedro Almodovar won’t be making a movie with Cate Blanchett

The Cleaning Women’s Guide, starring Cate Blanchett, was to be the first full English-language film directed by Pedro Almodóvar. However, it seems that the project will not come to fruition – at least not with Almodóvar behind the camera. The manager abandoned her.

Almodovar abandons the English language project

After months of preparations for the production of the “Women’s Hygiene Handbook”, Pedro Almodóvar decided to abandon the project. It was a very painful decision for meDirector commented. I’ve dreamed of working with Kate for a long time. Dirty Films has been so generous this whole time, and I’ve been blinded by excitement. Unfortunately, I no longer feel like I’m suitable for this project.

It is not currently known what this means for the film, but it appears that Blanchett and her production company Dirty Films want to continue the project. Will they be able to find an alternative like Almodovar? we will see.

Meanwhile, Almodovar himself is preparing another English-language project: a western short film Strange Way of Life, starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal.

The director’s first English-language film was the short “The Human Voice” starring Tilda Swinton. Check out the trailer:

What was the “hygiene guide” supposed to be?

“A Handbook for the Janitor” was to be an excerpt from the short story collection “Guidelines for Cleaning Women” by Lucia Berlin, published in 2015. The book consists of the stories of 43 women who perform various types of physical labor. The author talks about ordinary life and moments of revelation: in self-service laundries, in social rehabilitation centers, in upper-class dorms, and among telephone operators, struggling for the lives of mothers, commuters, and bad Christians. Berlin focuses on life’s fleeting moments, seemingly insignificant events or those we don’t notice in our daily routine (publisher description).