Todo sobre mi madre ( All About My Mother, 1999) earned the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and many critics believe that Hable con ella ( Talk to Her, 2002) also deserved that prize, but the Spanish film committee did not nominate it. Then after stumbling for a decade, he turned inward the whole tone and pace of his films changed, and suddenly he was back at the top of his game. Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios ( Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1988) was a great critical and commercial success for him. Over the past two decades Almodóvar has moved from the counterculture to the mainstream. One can understand how Pepi achieved cult status in post-Franco Madrid, but it would have been difficult to predict that this ribald production would launch the career that would save the moribund Spanish film industry. Originally titled General Erections, the film features a party scene in which Almodóvar himself organizes and participates in a measure-the-erections competition. His first feature film, Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del monton (in English, Pepi, Luci, Bom, and Other Girls on the Heap), released in 1980, became The Rocky Horror Picture Show of Spain. An out gay artist, Almodóvar’s stock-in-trade is sexual subversion. Pedro Almodóvar is Spain’s preeminent filmmaker and one of the heroes of the European struggle against Hollywood hegemony. Bad Education, directed by Pedro Almodóvar.