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Pain and Glory
****
Dir: Pedro Almodovar
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz, Julieta Serrano
(Spain, 15 1hr 53mins)
The latest from Spanish director Pedro Almodovar is a nuanced, subtle and apparently semi-autobiographical tale about a film director struggling with a creative block. Almodovar touches base with his three-decade long film-making history in a touching and brave opus of humanity.
Antonio Banderas is superb as Almodovar’s avatar, Salvador Mallo, a creative man suffering from a catalogue of issues preventing him from realising his vision. He is a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown, about to see his early classic film Sabor screened in a retrospective in Madrid, inadvertently forced to address issues from his past.
These involve a reconciliation with drug addict actor Alberto Crespo (the charismatic Asier Etxeandia) with whom he fell out with long ago, but reconnects with over some shared heroin.
Subsequently the film ducks and dives into other threads in his past. Ex-lover Frederico (Leonardo Sbaraglia) and his mother, (Penelope Cruz in flashback and Julietta Serrano in the modern day) as she faces death. It’s poignant and soul bearing, Almodovar dialing down his usual excessive flourishes and Banderas has never been better.
The director and the actor have had a long creative partnership since their early days; Banderas inherits Almodovar’s signature coiffure in the film, but the performance is far more nuanced as he essentially explores the life of his friend and collaborator. Moving, funny and aiming for closure with lost loves from the past, Pain and Glory also deals with sexuality and depression. Almodovar has always embraced difference, but this latest film, his 21st, casts a light on the filmmaker himself. It has a dream-like quality that lingers, his idealized youth with his mother brought into sharp contrast by her brittle nature when approaching death. A beguiling film that Almodovar fans will love, with its mature, thoughtful quietness.
Out now in cinemas
words Keiron Self