Cate Blanchett to Lead Pedro Almodóvar’s A Manual For Cleaning Women

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Cate Blanchett to Lead Pedro Almodóvar’s A Manual For Cleaning Women

According to Variety, Oscar winner Cate Blanchett (Nightmare Alley) has signed on to star in acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s upcoming film adaptation of A Manual for Cleaning Women, based on Lucia Berlin’s 2016 short story collection. The project will be serving as the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s first English-language film, which is currently in the early stages of development.

A Manual for Cleaning Women features 43 stories centering around working women in different types of demanding jobs. Almodóvar is no stranger to adapting female-driven stories as he previously directed films such as 1988’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1999’s All About My Mother, 2016’s Julieta, and last year’s Parallel Mothers.

The book synopsis reads: “With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians.

“Readers will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they’d ever overlooked her in the first place.”

The film will be directed and produced by Almodóvar. In addition to starring, Blanchett will also be producing through her Dirty Films banner along with Andrew Upton, and Coco Francini. New Republic Pictures’ Brian Oliver and Bradley Fischer are also set as producers.