Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz is Associate Professor of Film Studies, Comparative Literature & Humanities at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.

Introduction: Almodovar's cinema in context.- Chapter one: The aesthetics of bad taste.- Chapter two: Memory, identity, and style.- Chapter three: Figures of desire: the melodrama of longing.- Chapter four: The body and the nation.- Conclusion: Bad bodies, good hearts.