Almodóvar: Los Amantes Pasajeros (I'm So Excited!) (2013)

I’m So Excited – or The Fleeting Lovers in its literal translation – is Almodóvar's take on the prevalence for apocalyptic precarity in recent film, small-scale end-of-the-world narratives in which people are forced to face the end of things in a local, domestic way. Set on an aeroplane en route from Spain to Mexico, which is forced to prepare for an emergency landing when the landing gear malfunctions, it has all the ingredients for a sober, gripping existential drama. So it’s wonderful that Almodóvar plays it as a comedy, by staffing the plane with a collection of unbelievably camp gay stewards. Totally, melodramatically embracing the stereotypes his films usually sideline, Almodóvar presents us with a trio who have absolutely no vested interest in futurity or productivity – they’re just there to have a good time, for as long as they can. And that means that the imminent air disaster just comes to feel like business as usual, which is to say partying as usual – each loop around the airfield, each moment that brings them closer to annihilation, is just another level of intoxication; the more precarious and apocalyptic it becomes, the more normal it seems, the more cosy, domestic and comforting the stewards and their lifestyle feel. With characteristic wryness, then, Almodóvar paints air stewards as the coal face of the precariat, as if queer labor were the most vulnerable and volatile form of labor in existence, or all labor were queer insofar as it found itself in similar positions of vulnerability. Admittedly, that does mean that the film falters when it jumps back to the ground, but that doesn’t happen that often, and never punctures the excess of the air too much. Similarly, some critics have found the stereotyping offensive, but there’s also something liberating about seeing such a beacon of queer tastefulness, even of queer consensus, make a really gay film – and it’s really, really gay, dishing out fellatio jokes, and fellatio, like there’s no tomorrow.