ok, i understand now. don't take offence but i don't think anyone can seriously talk to you about almodovar for a number of reasons..
you don't like almodovar for personal reasons about melodrama, which is all you see in him along with an attempt to be controversial in a safe way. you also hate his audience, which you characterize an imaginary group of ppl who like his movies for the wrong reasons. you equate regular film appreciation circles with "extreme left-wing-high-brow-well-to-do gipsy kings listening dinner party" attendees, and fans of a "film festival "controversial" yet totally void of controversy aesthetic".
i'm just summarizing here.
i think your view of almodovar has been unfortunately skewed irrerparably by these elite-film douchebags you have encountered. so to convince you that almodovar is actually concerned with a LOT more than one-dimensional genre games, like melodrama for the sake of melodrama, or trying to be controversial to an arty crowd, is a bit futile. i can only say that i have never met any of these ppl you talk about, so my experience with almodovar has not been tainted at any point and i've managed to form my own opinion based on his films alone.
what someone said above about fuller and almodovar is true. almodovar is real cinema, he is really all about cinema and not just one genre or one idea. his early films are actually quite wild and hilarious. in Almodovar on Almodovar he talks about his maturation process from his early films to a more serious direction starting with The Flower of My Secret. from that point onwards if you ever bother to watch his films, you see someone really discovering their own voice. up til then it seemed he loved the way ppl reacted to his voice, he loved making ppl laugh, his early films are like a performance which he repeats very well. his post Flower maturation is almost as if he heard his own voice and became MUCH more aware of what he was saying. this is vague but it makes sense if u watch his films. his experimentation EXPLODES from the mid-90s onwards.
melodrama in almodovar is actually more accurately described as CAMP. he addressed everything on that subject conclusively in All About My Mother. that movie marked his philosophy so clearly that if someone watches that film and sees melodrama and controversy for the sake of an arty crowd, that person just doesn't get almodovar. which is fine. but not understanding a director, or misunderstanding him, does not mean he's overrated.