Movie Review: Pain & Glory

Pain & Glory **** / *****

Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar.

Written by: Pedro Almodóvar.

Starring: Antonio Banderas (Salvador Mallo), Asier Etxeandia (Alberto Crespo), Leonardo Sbaraglia (Federico Delgado), Nora Navas (Mercedes), Julieta Serrano (Jacinta), César Vicente (Eduardo), Asier Flores (Salvador Mallo), Penélope Cruz (Jacinta), Cecilia Roth (Zulema), Susi Sánchez (Beata), Raúl Arévalo (Venancio Mallo).

 

Great directors get old enough, and they will inevitably make a film about an aging great director, no longer appreciated as he once was, and falling into a pity spiral of some kind. Some directors (like Fellini or Woody Allen) get there sooner than others, but it makes sense that Pedro Almodovar has gotten there at this point in his career with Pain & Glory. The cracks in the Almodovar’s amazing output started showing a decade ago – when 2009’s Broken Embraces was met with basically a shrug – after a string of films that won him massive acclaim, prizes at Festivals around the world (although never the Palme at Cannes – where his films won everything else) and even as Screenplay Oscar, a rarity for a foreign filmmaker. In films like All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Bad Education and Volver, Almodovar delivered on what had become one of the best streaks for international art house audiences of any director in decades. But the last 10 years have not been as celebrated – after Broken Embraces was greeted with a shrug, The Skin I Live In found some great admirers, but also a lot of confusion (was Almodovar channeling Asian extreme cinema here), and the less said about the dismal “comedy” I’m So Excited the better. Even Julieta, my favorite from this period, seemed to be Almodovar trying to recapture something he had lost – and doing good, but not quite great.

 

Now, if Pain & Glory was the kind of self-pitying portrait of an artist who still thinks he is a genius, and no one else can see it, it may have been insufferable. We’ve seen those films before, and they usually don’t work very well. But Pain & Glory – which Almodovar insists isn’t autobiographical, even going so far as having dialogue in the film itself to that effect, but come on – he isn’t fooling anyone – isn’t that kind of film at all. It is a portrait of a great filmmaker, now late into middle age, questioning everything. He has a variety of medical illnesses that leave him in too much pain to work. The drugs don’t work as they once did, and he still struggles with the death of his beloved mother. He lives a solitary life in his great Madrid apartment (apparently Almodovar’s actual apartment – again, he isn’t fooling anyone) surrounded by artwork, and reminders of his once great career. He is now reflecting on his life – and his choices – that has led him to this point. It isn’t self-pity – but rather a rather clear eyed examination of this director.

 

The director is named Salvador Mallo, and is played by Antonio Banderas – a frequent collaborator with Almodovar, delivering the best performance of his career. It starts out with Mallo being asked to host a Q&A on one of his best known films – a film from 32 years ago, that he hasn’t watched since its premiere, because he was angry at the lead actor Alberto (Asier Etxeandia) for delivering a performance different from the one Mallo wanted him to give. He hasn’t spoken to Alberto since. Seeing the film however, he realizes how good the performance was – and tracks down Alberto. Alberto was a heroin addict back then – and still uses. And slowly, Salvador, who never used, starts using heroin as well. It’s the only thing that can cure his pain – but it also allows him to escape from his life. We also get flashbacks to Salvador’s childhood – growing up poor with a mostly absent father, and a loving mother (Penelope Cruz), who as we see her played by the great Julieta Serrano later in the film, loved her only child – even if she never fully accepted him, or his homosexuality.

 

Pain & Glory is about Salvador coming to terms with his past – learning to let go of some of it, and just accept others parts of it. It’s also about him slowly finding his way back to expressing himself artistically – which has to do with allowing himself to explore those painful parts of his past.

 

Almodovar has always been an artist who has dabbled in meta-fiction in his films – but often they have come in different ways, telling the story of the women in his life, but from a distance. That distance is erased here, because Almodovar is at the core of the film in the Banderas character. It’s a tribute to Banderas’ performance that he doesn’t try and do an Almodovar impression – he doesn’t need to, he knows this man inside and out, and finds the right notes to play here. The film may not quite be as vibrant and colorful as some of Almodovar’s other films – not as bold or experimental in its style. But he’s replaced that with perhaps an even deeper emotional level. Without spoiling anything, I will say the last act of the film is one scene after another that may well inspire tears – a long conversation with someone from Mallo’s past is among the best scenes Almodovar has ever done, and it’s followed up with bolder statements on art – from the past, and moving into the future.

 

Almodovar is 70 now – so it’s not uncommon for filmmakers at his age to have lost a step, and maybe simply trying to repeat his past successes, or trying too hard to be relevant again. Perhaps that has what has marred his work in the past decade. But with Pain & Glory, Almodovar has crafted his best work in years – and perhaps the most honest and heartfelt of all of his films. It certainly shows that he is not done yet.

Movie Review: Julieta

Julieta

Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar.

Written by: Pedro Almodóvar based on the short stories by Alice Munro.

Starring: Adriana Ugarte (Younger Julieta Arcos), Emma Suárez (Julieta Arcos), Daniel Grao (Xoan), Inma Cuesta (Ava), Michelle Jenner (Beatriz), Darío Grandinetti (Lorenzo Gentile), Rossy de Palma (Marian), Susi Sánchez (Sara), Joaquín Notario (Samuel), Mariam Bachir (Sanáa), Blanca Parés (Antía), Priscilla Delgado (Antía - adolescent), Sara Jiménez (Beatriz - adolescent).

 

Pedro Almodovar is now one of the elder statesmen of European art house cinema – and like many auteurs as they age (he is 67 – making his 21^st feature) – there can be a tendency to repeat your past triumphs. For some, that still works, but for someone like Almodovar – whose films used to be provocative – they can feel like he is trying too hard. We are probably a decade removed from his last great film – Volver (2006) – which came at the end of a seven year period that also produced All My Mother, Talk to Her and my personal favorite Bad Education – great films all. Since then, there has been the overheated Hitchcock homage Broken Embraces (2009) – visually stunning, but not as dramatically satisfying, The Skin I Live In (2011), in which Almodovar flirted with extreme horror, not very effectively for me (others, I know, are big fans) and the downright horrible comedy I’m So Excited (2013) – which is the worst thing I’ve ever seen from him. His new film, Julieta, is somewhat of a course correction – but an odd one in its own way. Like many of Almodovar’s films, the film is clearly inspired by the films of Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk – the bold colors, the sweeping camera moves, Alberto Iglesias’ wonderful, Bernard Hermann inspired score – in many ways, you feel like you’re back with Almodovar in his prime. And yet, while Julieta looks like a classic Almodovar melodrama, the film never quite goes all the way over the top, the way he can (usually, brilliantly). While the film looks like his melodramas, in reality, the film stays more grounded in reality than his films usually do. This is, I think, because of the source material – a trio of interconnected short stories by Canadian, Nobel Prize winning author Alice Munro. Munro’s stories are often more about the mundanity on real life – which is at odds with Almodovar’s style. It’s a combination that perhaps shouldn’t work at all – but somehow it does. It’s not one of Almodovar’s best – but it’s at the very least very interesting.

 

The film opens with Julieta (played by the stunning Adriana Ugarte) on a train – where she is going to start her new, temporary job as a classics teacher. On the train she meets two men – the first, an older gentleman who sits down across from her and interrupts her as she reads – saying he’s hoping they can keep each other company on the long ride. Julieta is (understandably) a little creeped out by him, and gets up to leave – ending up meeting, and flirting, with the younger, handsome Xoan (Daniel Grao). Tragedy strikes not long after their meeting – and the guilt that Julieta will feel informs the rest of the story. She will eventually marry Xoan – have a beloved daughter, Antia, but there is more tragedy in store. The framing device – and ultimately final chapter, has a now middle aged Julieta (played by Emma Suarez), searching for her daughter, who ran off years ago, and made it clear she wanted nothing to do with her mother.

 

I think the first two segments work better than the final one. In these segments, Ugarte is wonderful and truly stunning – her Melanie Griffith in Something Wild look in the first part is a beauty, and she somehow tops it later. It’s a passionate performance – and a wonderful one. It’s her first time working with Almodovar, but hopefully not her last. There’s another wonderful performance in these earlier segments – by Almodovar regular Rossy de Palma as a Mrs. Danvers inspired maid. The third segment – where Suarez takes over for Ugarte isn’t quite as good. I don’t think that’s Suarez’s fault – she is very good in the role, and its nearly perfect physical casting (she looks like she could easily be an older Julieta) – but that part requires her to look so distraught and on the verge of tears for the whole time, that it really starts to get repetitive. Perhaps being familiar with the Munro stories doesn’t help – this is the only part that is really a mystery, and knowing the end (or non-end) that was coming doesn’t help things.

 

Still though, there’s no denying for me that Julieta is Almodovar’s best in a while – since at least Broken Embraces, and probably since Volver. Perhaps Almodovar needed his detour in horror and silly comedy that his last two films represented, to get back to doing what he does best. This is still somewhat of a departure for him – you expect the film to become overheated, for emotions to spill out all over the screen – emotions that match the explosion of color, music and style in every frame – and it never does. That’s an odd choice to be sure – but an interesting one.

Movie Review: I'm So Excited

I’m So Excited
Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar.
Written by: Pedro Almodóvar.
Starring: Carlos Areces (Fajas), Javier Cámara (Joserra), Raúl Arévalo (Ulloa), Lola Dueñas (Bruna), Hugo Silva (Benito Morón), Antonio de la Torre (Álex Acero), José Luis Torrijo (Sr. Más), José María Yazpik (Infante), Cecilia Roth (Norma Boss), Penélope Cruz (Jessica), Antonio Banderas (León), Carmen Machi (Portera), Blanca Suárez (Ruth), Guillermo Toledo (Ricardo Galán), Paz Vega (Alba), Miguel Ángel Silvestre (Novio), Laya Martí (Novia).

After making three brilliant films in a row – All About My Mother (1999), Talk to Her (2002) and Bad Education (2004), Pedro Almodovar has pretty much been on a slow but decline. Volver (2006) wasn’t quite vintage Almodovar, but was close enough not to be considered a misfire. I like Broken Embraces (2009) more than most – mainly for its style (not sure I could give you a detailed plot synopsis of it right now if I tried – but images from the film still come readily to mind), and I disliked The Skin I Live In (2011) more than most – basically wishing Takahasi Miike should have made it instead – the style was there, but a wooden performance by Antonio Banderas and an unnecessary nastiness kept me from enjoying it as much as I would have liked. Now comes I’m So Excited – which is hopefully the bottom of this downward trend and will lead to a bounce back. The film is a colorful and energetic comedy – but that ultimately leads nowhere.

The film takes place on a flight from Spain to Mexico – except the plane never actually does leave Spain. After takeoff, the realize they won’t be able to deploy the landing gear properly, so the planes circles around and around in the sky of Spain, waiting for a runway to clear so they can do a controlled crash landing. To make everything easier, everyone in coach has been drugged out of their minds and are asleep. The few passengers in first class, their three gay stewards, and two bi-sexual pilots, basically spend the entire 90 minute running time drinking, doing drugs, having sex and telling each other their comedic life stories.

As many other reviewers have noted (how could they not?) the fact that the plane goes round and round in the air ultimately leading nowhere is a pretty apt way to describe the movie itself. The movie introduces us to its characters – a pair of newlyweds, a man who knows he’ll be arrested for his financial scams, an actor juggling multiple women, a man in a suit who looks like a Mexican hit man, perhaps because that’s what he is, a famous dominatrix, and a middle age physic/virgin, determined to lose her virginity soon (she picked the right flight). And then it throws the three campy, over-the-top gay stereotype stewards into the mix, who drink, gossip and dance around to the title song. Then it throws in the pilots, who don’t have much to do. Then it throws in a few cutaways to the actors girlfriends outside the plane. I kept watching the movie expecting it to go somewhere – to eventually cohere into some sort of larger purpose, and time and time, the movie leads you to nowhere.

You really cannot blame the cast – they throw themselves into their roles in every conceivable way imaginable through the course of the movie. Whatever Almodovar was hoping for from his cast, they certainly deliver what he wanted. But it seems to me that Almodovar doesn’t have a larger purpose in mind – the movie is meant to be nothing more than what it is – a lark. Some have suggested that the film is a metaphor of Spain and their economic crisis – circling round and round, with no one seemingly all that concerned – but that’s pushing it a bit.

Far be it for me to tell Almodovar he cannot decide to do something light hearted and undemanding – especially after he wallowed in darkness in The Skin I Live In. We have seen cases in the past where directors take on something lighter and fun to recharge their batteries – Scorsese says that’s why he did After Hours (1985), after the misery of shooting The King of Comedy (1983) and having The Last Temptation of Christ fall part on him the first time. But After Hours was a brilliant movie – a surreal, comedic masterwork. I’m So Excited on the other hand feels tossed off – a film that Almodovar didn’t really think through, but decided to go ahead and make it anyway. Because he is as talented as he is, the film is still watchable – it has isolated moments where vintage Almodovar comes out – but mainly it goes nowhere, and adds up to nothing.

Movie Review: The Skin I Live In

The Skin I Live In ***

Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar.

Written by: Pedro Almodóvar based on the novel by Thierry Jonquet.

Starring: Antonio Banderas (Robert Ledgard), Elena Anaya (Vera Cruz), Marisa Paredes (Marilia), Jan Cornet (Vicente), Roberto Álamo (Zeca), Eduard Fernández (Fulgencio), Blanca Suárez (Norma Ledgard).

Pedro Almodovar is love with old movies. Watching his films brings to mind 1950s melodramas – especially those by Douglas Sirk, but with less censorship. There’s also a healthy dose of Hitchcock in his films, particularly recently, where his films have become more mysterious in nature. His latest film, The Skin I Live In, is no exception. There’s a little Sirk, a little Hitchcock, a little of Georges Franu’s Eyes Without a Face in the mix, all filtered through Almodovar’s prism of sexual identity. It is a film that you really cannot take seriously, because it goes so far over the top, but I don’t see that as necessarily a bad thing.

The film stars Antonio Banderas as Dr. Robert Ledgard, a brilliant plastic surgeon and researcher, who believes he has come up with a new way to help burn victims recover from their horrible scars. In the process, he has essentially invented a new kind of skin. He says he did all of this because his wife was horribly burned and killed in a car accident, and this was his way of dealing with it. He gives a lecture where he explains his discoveries, tested on lab mice. But we already know he hasn’t just tested it on mice. He has a real person as a guinea pig. This is Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya), the beautiful woman he keeps under lock and key at his house/clinic. This makes his maid Marilla (Marisa Paredes), who has been with him since childhood, extremely uncomfortable. When Marilla’s son Zeca (Roberto Alamo) shows up, we start to understand why.

To give away more would be criminal. But let me just say that I was convinced I knew where the movie was headed from the outset, and could not have possibly been more wrong. Almodovar, working on a novella by Thierry Jonquet, starts with what seems to be a standard revenge thriller/horror movie, but then goes deeper and deeper as it goes along. I think one of the reasons why I didn’t suspect where the movie was going is because I could not imagine even going there. It’s just so bizarre that I can’t believe someone would attempt it. And I say this with admiration.

The film, like all of Almodovar’s work, is impeccably made. I love when he does dark, and tones down his usual lush, vibrant colors, which only makes a few appearances here. Visually, this film is more akin to his Bad Education (which may just be my favorite of his films) than something as richly colorful as Volver. The cinematography, art direction and costume design are excellent, and the score by Alberto Ingelesis would have made Hitchcock’s regular composer Bernard Hermann proud.

If The Skin I Live In is less satisfying than most of his work, it’s because the story depends on its inherent shock value – which to be truly effective, needs to hit the audience like a gut punch, which it does. But what this requires is for the actors to play everything a little too close to the vest for much of the movie – not revealing too much. As a result, Antonio Banderas is actually kind of dull in this role, which is a disappointment given his other work with Almodovar. The beautiful Elena Anaya seems little more than skin deep for too much of the movie – although she makes up for it in the final reel. And we constantly think that Marilia wants to say more, but is held back by the necessities of the plot. Perhaps the best performance in the movie is by Jan Cornet as Vincente, who I can’t say much about without fear of giving too much away.

And yet, despite its flaws, I couldn’t help but thoroughly enjoy The Skin I Live In. Almodovar has pushed himself here, and although the result isn’t quite as good as much of his previous work, it still drew me in, and shocked me.

Movie Review: Broken Embraces

Broken Embraces *** ½
Directed By: Pedro Almodovar.
Written By: Pedro Almodovar.
Starring: Penélope Cruz (Lena), Lluís Homar (Mateo Blanco / Harry Caine), Blanca Portillo (Judit García), José Luis Gómez (Ernesto Martel), Rubén Ochandiano (Ray X), Tamar Novas (Diego).

Pedro Almodovar is one of those directors who is in love with movies from the past. In the past decade he has made five films – Broken Embraces being the fifth – in all of them in a way call to mind the films of Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock. The plots are all complex, and loop around themselves, gradually wrapping the audience in their intrigue and melodrama. While I would say that Broken Embraces is probably his weakest film this decade, it is still much better than most films we see.

The movie opens in 2009 Spain, where Harry Caine (Lluis Homar) makes his living writing screenplays. He informs us that at one point he was known as Mateo Blanco and was a filmmaker, but in the past years he has lost his sight, and so he has buried Mateo, and become his alter ego – the screenwriter. Two things bring Harry back into the past. The first is a newspaper article about the death of wealthy financier Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez), the second is an unexpected visit from a would be filmmaker who calls himself Ray X (Ruben Ochandiano), who Harry recognizes immediately from his voice. His agent, Judit (Blanca Portillo) tells him to forget all about it, but he cannot. When he is alone with Judit’s son Diego (Tamar Novas), he tells his story of what happened 15 years ago, on the set of his last film as a director. There he met Lena (Penelope Cruz), the mistress of Martel, cast her in the lead, and then the two fell in love. Ray X, then Ernesto Jr., is making a “Making of” documentary about the movie, and catches everything on his camera. Ernesto Sr., used to getting his own way, is enraged by the footage.

I loved the part of the movie set in 1994. This is classic Almodovar melodrama. His camera caresses the sexy, voluptuous body of Penelope Cruz. Those eyes, that face,  – Cruz is a beauty to behold, and she never looks better than she does in an Almodovar film (it’s a tossup as to whether she’s sexier here or in Volver). She is also much more natural speaking in her native language than she ever is speaking English. Here she is the classic female victim. She becomes Martel’s mistress not out of love or lust (he is an old man even in 1994), but because he has money, and if she wants to save her father’s life, she needs that money. When she meets Mateo, she is instantly drawn to him. At first, it appears to be pure lust, but a deeper bond develops between the two of them. She risks everything for Mateo. It is one of Cruz’s finest performances.

The framing device for the movie set in 2009 was for me, less successful. It does allow Almodovar to bring back buried secrets, and show the effect on people after the main events of the movie, but these scenes drag for me a little bit. Particularly when we get to parts about re-editing his final movie. It’s fascinating in a cinephile kind of way, watching filmmakers craft movies, but overall, it doesn’t do much but drag the story down.

But that’s a minor gripe about the movie. Almodovar has not lost his flair for visual dramatics, and here he creates some of his most memorable images (and no, Penelope Cruz isn’t in all of them, but yes, she is in most of them). I love the sweeping camera work, the darkness around the edges, the flair for the dramatic, and slow motion shots. Alberto Ingeleasis’ score is classic old school Hollywood in a way that I haven’t heard in years. In short, while I do not think that Broken Embraces is quite the triumph that most of Almodovar’s recent work has been, it is impossible to deny that it is not still tremendously entertaining and well made.