With the success of his last movie, Almodovar's films make a sudden change, one affecting both its vision and subject. This is the first time he shares the writing of the screenplay (with Jesus Ferrero). "Matador" (1985) becomes his "weirdest" film; it draws away from the naturalism and humor of his previous work and turns into a beautiful fable about death, sex and guilt. The film provokes great unrest and different opinions in Spain. However, it's very well received outside, especially in Latin America.

Pedro Almodovar shoots "La ley del deseo" in 1986. It's the first time he produces one of films together with his brother Agustin. Benefiting from Pilar Miro's law of 1983, they create their own production company, "El Deseo". Despite the success of his previous filmography and the new law of cinematography, "La Ley del Deseo" finds it hard to get official granting and becomes a financial challenge for the newly created company. And it's this challenge and the freedom it conveys that make "La Ley del Deseo" one of the author's and Spanish cinema's freest films for the time.

In 1987 "Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios" sets the stepping stone for Pedro's work. This white comedy goes worldwide and deserves the public's and critics' acclaim. It gets up to fifty national and international awards and an Oscar nomination, breaking ticket-box records both in Spain and outside.

Pedro travels restlessly throughout 1988, tasting success' advantages and disadvantages. To escape from it all he settles back in Madrid, and as his Women's uproar develops with the Oscar nomination, he shoots a new movie: "Atame" (1989). This work involves the breaking-off with his reference actress, Carmen Maura, and the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with another great diva of the Spanish and European cinema: Victoria Abril. The film's a blockbuster, half a million people see it.

But scandal and controversy marked its U.S. release. The MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America), the institution in charge of the films' rating, margined its distribution with the stigmata of an X. Backed by the film's distribution company (Miramax), Pedro and other victims of American Puritanism filed a stubborn legal battle. The result of it was the birth of a new rating, NC17, applicable to those films of explicit nature previously regarded unfairly as pornographic. The movie weakened with all this controversy.