He's one of cinema's most visionary directors, and his films have shaped the way we see his country. So how does Pedro Almodóvar choose to portray Spain's catastrophic economic crisis? With an outrageous, sex-sozzled farce

Pedro Almodóvar is hobbling. He is also hopping mad. He has come into his Madrid office – where visitors are greeted by a massive album of Helmut Newton nudes – despite surgery on his knee the day before. Hence the hobble. But what really hurts him is that, forced to rest from his normally hectic routine of scriptwriting, the director has spent his convalescence watching the news. "Some days I try not to see the news at all," he says. "But yesterday I couldn't avoid it. It is all horrific."

Almodóvar's day in front of the television consuming endless stories of the country's economic woes, which have left a quarter of Spaniards out of work, has made him indignant. "I think the country as a whole is worried about social unrest breaking out," he tells me. "I certainly am. Every day that goes by, I get the impression that there is further provocation." But, he reassures me, "That doesn't mean I am inciting anyone to violence. Quite the opposite. I'd invite everyone to react – but in the most peaceful way possible."

As Spain's most famous film director – the Oscar-winning auteur of dramas such as Talk to Her and Volver, which range from melancholic to subversive to downright twisted – you can imagine Almodóvar's anger being expressed in dark ways. Witness The Skin I Live In, his most recent and arguably most chilling film to date. But at 63, Almodóvar has other plans. "I like the idea of helping people to have fun," he says, "because the atmosphere right now is so very bleak." And so the creator of Broken Embraces and Bad Education offers us his latest film – a screwball comedy set in a transatlantic jet, full of mile-high blow jobs and dancing cabin stewards camping it up to the Pointer Sisters (their signature song "I'm So Excited" provides the English title – in Spanish, it's called Los amantes pasajeros). And box office results in Spain suggest Almodóvar has judged the mood perfectly – the film gave him his best opening weekend performance ever.

In Madrid I've heard it approvingly referred to as a mariconada – a sort of irreverent campfest. Almodóvar's first return to pure comedy in 25 years, since Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, is a piece of extravagant, kitsch entertainment which he joyfully calls "my gayest film ever". It's also a return to the style of his early successes, when he burst on to the scene as a colourful purveyor of lavish, gleeful, hedonistic transgression. Gags include a clairvoyant losing her virginity by riding a sleeping, but aroused, fellow passenger, and the semen flecks left on a cabin steward's face after he locks himself into a cramped bathroom cubicle with the captain.

But the film can also be taken as a metaphor for ailing, recession-struck Spain itself. "I wanted this to be a wacky comedy, something escapist," says Almodóvar. "But it is true there are things that chime with the times." An aircraft circles aimlessly in the sky, its landing carriage damaged, awaiting the go-ahead for a crash landing. The crew and first-class passengers drown their sorrows, confess their sins and indulge in mescaline-fuelled sex while the tourist class drifts into ignorant, drug-induced slumber. Almodóvar himself was surprised at how the surreal backstories of the film's main characters – who include a crooked banker fleeing the country and a call girl who claims to have a compromising videotape of the king – increasingly resonate with the things Spaniards read daily in their newspapers.

"There was always the metaphor of a Spain that doesn't know where it is heading, that doesn't know where to land or who will be in charge, nor what the dangers are," he says. But he did not foresee the raft of corruption cases that have since afflicted everything from prime minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative People's Party to King Juan Carlos's family. "Since we shot it, the film has actually gained in metaphoric relevance," he says.

Almodóvar's thick, vertically groomed bush of hair is now completely grey and his face is underscored by an equally grey beard. He wears it all with the same panache as, say, Albert Einstein – but it is a reminder, along with the knee, that age is catching up. Indeed there is something of the ageing rock star about him, as if the spirit of youthful