# Tacones Lejanos
**Tacones lejanos** (released in English as *High Heels* and in French as *Talons aiguilles*) is a 1991 Spanish-French feature film directed and written by [Pedro Almodóvar](https://www.edgepedia.org/pedro-almodovar), starring Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, and [Miguel Bosé](https://www.edgepedia.org/miguel-bose). It is a melodrama about a famous singer, Becky del Páramo, who returns to Madrid after years away and reunites with her daughter Rebeca, who has married one of her mother's former lovers; when the husband is murdered, mother and daughter both fall under suspicion, and the investigating judge leads a double life as a drag performer who imitates Becky.[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=101591) • [2](https://madridfilmoffice.com/produccion/tacones-lejanos/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and screenwriter | Pedro Almodóvar (story and screenplay)[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=101591) |
| Production | Spain (80%) and France (20%); El Deseo, S.A. and Ciby 2000; executive producer Agustín Almodóvar[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=101591) |
| Release | Spain 23 October 1991; France 15 January 1992; later rollouts through 1993[3](https://cineuropa.org/film/401419/) |
| Runtime and rating | 112 minutes; certified not recommended for audiences under 18[4](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/en-us/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=101591) |
| Spanish box office | 5,234,899.68 € gross and 2,073,124 admissions[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=101591) |
| Awards | César for best foreign film (dated 1992 by the ICAA, 1993 by other sources); Cartagena de Indias 1992 best actress (Victoria Abril); Gramado best actress and best director[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=101591) • [2](https://madridfilmoffice.com/produccion/tacones-lejanos/) • [5](https://manila.cervantes.es/imagenes/file/ic-pelicula2018-20180924-fa-online.pdf) |
| Music | Score by Ryuichi Sakamoto; songs performed by Luz Casal; Miles Davis on trumpet for "Solea" and "Saeta"[4](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/en-us/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=101591) |
## Spoilers
### Plot and characters
Becky del Páramo (Marisa Paredes) is a pop singer who abandoned her daughter Rebeca in childhood to pursue her career. After fifteen years she returns to Madrid to reconnect with her, but the reunion is complicated by the men around them: Manuel (Féodor Atkine), Rebeca's husband and Becky's former lover, and Letal (Miguel Bosé), a drag performer who imitates Becky and whom Rebeca seeks out when she misses her mother. The problems begin on the day Manuel is found murdered in his home, and mother and daughter become suspects in a crime investigated by Judge Domínguez (also played by Bosé).[6](https://riull.ull.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/915/27865/Identidades%20trans%20en%20la%20obra%20cinematografica%20de%20Almodovar.%20Una%20mirada%20a%20traves%20de%20la%20educacion%20artistica..pdf?sequence=1)
Bosé's triple role is central to the film's structure. He plays Judge Eduardo Domínguez, Hugo, and Letal, and his character opens the story as the thread linking the mother-daughter, husband-wife, and son-in-law-mother-in-law oppositions before his judicial identity takes over the investigation.[7](https://www.imdb.com/es/title/tt0103030/fullcredits/) • [8](https://lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/4065623/2225176.pdf) Rebeca works as a television news anchor, and the cast also includes Miriam Díaz Aroca as Isabel, Bibi Andersen as Chon, Nacho Martínez as Juan, Rebeca's father, and Cristina Marcos as Paula; a young [Javier Bardem](https://www.edgepedia.org/javier-bardem) appears as a floor manager at the TV station.[9](https://dreamers.es/peliculas/2129_TACONES_LEJANOS.html) • [10](https://www.cinematheque.qc.ca/en/cinema/high-heels-tacones-lejanos/)
## Production and crew
The film was produced by Almodóvar's company El Deseo with the French firm Ciby 2000, with Agustín Almodóvar as executive producer and Enrique Posner as associate producer. Alfredo Mayo was the cinematographer, José Salcedo the editor, Pierre-Louis Thévenet the production designer, and José María de Cossío the costume designer, with [Karl Lagerfeld](https://www.edgepedia.org/karl-lagerfeld) costuming Victoria Abril.[4](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/en-us/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=101591) • [6](https://riull.ull.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/915/27865/Identidades%20trans%20en%20la%20obra%20cinematografica%20de%20Almodovar.%20Una%20mirada%20a%20traves%20de%20la%20educacion%20artistica..pdf?sequence=1) It was shot on 35 mm in Eastmancolor with a panoramic aspect ratio.[4](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/en-us/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=101591)
The soundtrack combines Sakamoto's score with a set of songs that carry much of the film's emotional weight: "Piensa en mí" by Agustín Lara and "Un año de amor" (adapted from "C'est irréparable" and "Un anno d'amore", with Spanish lyrics by Almodóvar), both sung by [Luz Casal](https://www.edgepedia.org/luz-casal), who also provides Becky's singing voice; "Pecadora" performed by Los Hermanos Rosario; Gil Evans's "Solea" and "Saeta" played by [Miles Davis](https://www.edgepedia.org/miles-davis); and two pieces by [George Fenton](https://www.edgepedia.org/george-fenton).[4](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/en-us/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=101591) • [10](https://www.cinematheque.qc.ca/en/cinema/high-heels-tacones-lejanos/)
Almodóvar explained the title by reference to a western: he said he named it because it reminded him of *Distant Drums*, and he liked the idea of presenting the film as a western, something it is not; he described it as a love story between a mother and her daughter.[11](https://tesiunamdocumentos.dgb.unam.mx/ppt2002/0253668/0253668.pdf)
## Release and reception
The film was certified on 15 October 1991 and released in Spain on 23 October 1991, distributed by Warner Española.[4](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/en-us/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=101591) The Madrid premiere at the Cine Palacio de la Música was staged with two giant heels, 4.20 meters tall each, the maximum height permitted by law, built of wood and plaster and covered in red quilted fabric and panther skin, pulled by trucks along the Gran Vía; Almodóvar, Paredes, Bibi Andersen, Bosé, Abril, and Cristina Marcos rode inside them.[12](https://elpais.com/diario/1991/10/24/cultura/688258807_850215.html) Canal + broadcast a making-of documentary, *Así se hizo: Tacones lejanos*, covering the casting, Bosé's adaptation to his transvestite role, and early footage.[13](https://elpais.com/diario/1991/10/12/radiotv/687222003_850215.html)
In November 1991 the Spanish Film Academy selected *Tacones lejanos*, chosen from 35 films released that year, as Spain's entry for the Hollywood Oscar for best non-English-language film.[14](https://elpais.com/diario/1991/11/05/cultura/689295605_850215.html) In Spain it sold 2,073,124 admissions for a gross of 5,234,899.68 €.[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=101591) Contemporary Spanish criticism was generally favorable, treating the film as a step in Almodóvar's development of a personal cinematic language.[15](https://encadenados.org/monograficos/no-060-monografico-pedro-almodovar/tacones-lejanos-1991/) A debate in *El País* at the time asked whether the film was heir to [Douglas Sirk](https://www.edgepedia.org/douglas-sirk)'s grand melodrama or closer to television soap opera, with the critic arguing that while it is plainly not a culebrón, its stature sits far below *Imitation of Life*.[16](https://elpais.com/diario/1991/10/24/cultura/688258808_850215.html)
## Awards
The film won the César for best foreign film. The Spanish film authority ICAA dates the award to 1992, while the Madrid Film Office and the Cinémathèque québécoise list it as a 1993 César; both attributions appear in the record.[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=101591) • [2](https://madridfilmoffice.com/produccion/tacones-lejanos/) • [10](https://www.cinematheque.qc.ca/en/cinema/high-heels-tacones-lejanos/) Victoria Abril won best actress at [Cartagena](https://www.edgepedia.org/cartagena) de Indias in 1992, and the film took best actress and best director at the Gramado Festival.[1](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=101591) • [5](https://manila.cervantes.es/imagenes/file/ic-pelicula2018-20180924-fa-online.pdf)
## Themes and critical reading
Scholarship on the film has concentrated on gender performance and on Spain's relationship with its past. A queer-theoretical reading built on [Judith Butler](https://www.edgepedia.org/judith-butler)'s account of parody and gender performativity examines how the film's imitation mechanism problematizes the sex-gender and homo-heterosexual dichotomies, with drag performance and a masculinity in crisis at its center.[8](https://lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/4065623/2225176.pdf) Another line of criticism reads the film as portraying the interconnectedness of past and present in early 1990s Spain, a country that had seemingly become a modern nation and left the Transition behind, engaging with Francoism, memory, and the Pact of Forgetting (Spain's agreement to avoid reckoning with Francoist crimes).[17](https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/slac_00100_1) Within Almodóvar's 1990s work, a Cambridge companion chapter groups *¡Átame!*, *Tacones lejanos*, and *Kika* as films on the verge of a genre breakdown, arguing that their critical and commercial backlash stemmed from the director's increased experimental playfulness with genre and tone, and analyzing their distancing techniques such as mise-en-abyme, defamiliarisation, and exaggeration.[18](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-pedro-almodovar/on-the-verge-of-a-genre-breakdown-atame-tacones-lejanos-and-kika/3488EA105547F478812F3EA7471C539A)
The film was shot largely in Madrid, with locations including Barajas Airport, the Tablao Villa Rosa, the Cementerio de La Almudena, Paseo de la Castellana 138, and the Fiscalía del Tribunal Supremo.[2](https://madridfilmoffice.com/produccion/tacones-lejanos/) Its poster, showing a black high-heeled shoe whose heel fuses with a revolver, has been described as an icon of Spanish cinema.[19](https://uvadoc.uva.es/bitstream/handle/10324/14134/TFG-N.338.pdf?sequence=1)
## References
1. [TACONES LEJANOS, ICAA Film Database, file 101591](https://infoicaa.mcu.es/CatalogoICAA/Peliculas/Detalle?Pelicula=101591)
2. [Tacones lejanos, Madrid Film Office](https://madridfilmoffice.com/produccion/tacones-lejanos/)
3. [High Heels (Tacones lejanos), Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/film/401419/)
4. [TACONES LEJANOS, ICAA film file PDF](https://sede.mcu.gob.es/CatalogoICAA/en-us/Peliculas/GetPdf?Pelicula=101591)
5. [Tacones lejanos, Instituto Cervantes de Manila film notes](https://manila.cervantes.es/imagenes/file/ic-pelicula2018-20180924-fa-online.pdf)
6. [Identidades trans en la obra cinematográfica de Almodóvar, Universidad de La Laguna](https://riull.ull.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/915/27865/Identidades%20trans%20en%20la%20obra%20cinematografica%20de%20Almodovar.%20Una%20mirada%20a%20traves%20de%20la%20educacion%20artistica..pdf?sequence=1)
7. [Tacones lejanos (1991), full cast and crew, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/es/title/tt0103030/fullcredits/)
8. [Irene Pelayo, Performance drag y parodia en Tacones lejanos, Lund University](https://lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/4065623/2225176.pdf)
9. [Tacones Lejanos, Dreamers](https://dreamers.es/peliculas/2129_TACONES_LEJANOS.html)
10. [High Heels (Tacones lejanos), La Cinémathèque québécoise](https://www.cinematheque.qc.ca/en/cinema/high-heels-tacones-lejanos/)
11. [Tesis: El cine de Pedro Almodóvar, UNAM](https://tesiunamdocumentos.dgb.unam.mx/ppt2002/0253668/0253668.pdf)
12. [Almodóvar invadió la Gran Vía con dos tacones gigantes, El País, 24 October 1991](https://elpais.com/diario/1991/10/24/cultura/688258807_850215.html)
13. [Imágenes inéditas del rodaje de 'Tacones lejanos' en Canal +, El País, 12 October 1991](https://elpais.com/diario/1991/10/12/radiotv/687222003_850215.html)
14. [La Academia del Cine elige 'Tacones lejanos' para Hollywood, El País, 5 November 1991](https://elpais.com/diario/1991/11/05/cultura/689295605_850215.html)
15. [Tacones lejanos (1991), Encadenados, revista de cine](https://encadenados.org/monograficos/no-060-monografico-pedro-almodovar/tacones-lejanos-1991/)
16. [Un globo hinchado, El País, 24 October 1991](https://elpais.com/diario/1991/10/24/cultura/688258808_850215.html)
17. [As if Franco had never existed? The intrusive past in Pedro Almodóvar's Tacones lejanos/High Heels, Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas (Intellect)](https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/slac_00100_1)
18. [On the verge of a genre breakdown: ¡Átame!, Tacones lejanos, and Kika, in The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, Cambridge University Press](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cinema-of-pedro-almodovar/on-the-verge-of-a-genre-breakdown-atame-tacones-lejanos-and-kika/3488EA105547F478812F3EA7471C539A)
19. [Trabajo final sobre el cartel de Tacones Lejanos, Universidad de Valladolid](https://uvadoc.uva.es/bitstream/handle/10324/14134/TFG-N.338.pdf?sequence=1)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films early 1990s*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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