BROKEN EMBRACES

By Dianne L. Brooks


Pedro Almodovar is a master: one of the most interesting filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s introducing a uniquely grand, wildly visual, sensuous  and socially observant world of post Franco Spain.  Almodovar is the kind of director with a deep and rich knowledge and reverence for “cinema” for the potential of the medium to express more than a shiny, surface entertainment.  At the same time Almodovar revels in the shiny surface, a modern day master of operatic melodrama in the great traditions of someone like Luchino Visconti or Douglas Sirk.

Almodovar once again calls upon the ravishing Penelope Cruz who so inspired him and us in All About My Mother and Volver.   Here she begins as a poor girl who sells herself to a rich man, only to find true love after.  It’s the basis for so many a melodrama, but in Almodovar’s hands it’s offered in a visually and narratively unpredictable way.  At the same time it’s seems more subdued than what Almodovar has offered before, a bit more lyrical, more beautiful, more absolutely romantic.

At center is Harry Caine aka Mateo (Lluís Homar), a blind film director who is called upon to tell the story of his romance with Lena (Cruz) by the son of his loyal producer Judit (Blanca Portillo).  Mateo meets Lena when she comes to audition for a role in his film and they begin a love affair almost immediately.  Lena’s wealthy and powerful companion, Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) suspects what is going on and becomes obsessed with exposing the two.  When they finally escape, the ending is not what they had planned.

As in all Almodovar, the storytelling is multilayered, non-chronological, so that twists and turns lead to surprises and sudden revelations.  It’s a love story but it’s also, perhaps more so, a mystery.  Almodovar takes the structure and general rules of melodrama: rich versus poor, extremes of emotions, and inexplicable twists of fate and then here binds it together with elements of the thriller, withholding and then slowly revealing little bits of information along the way.  And here Almodovar leads us to believe there will be that thriller resolution, everything tied up neatly and explained...and of course it isn’t.

The film is also very much about filmmakers: about Almodovar’s reverence for his predecessors.  Not only is Mateo a director, there are cinematic references throughout.
At one point  he has the Lena and Mateo watching Rosselini’s Voyage to Italy in an odd sort of foreshadowing.  Later, his assistant asks to watch a film and as he searches, we see Mateo’s (Almodovar’s?) collection, from Sirk to Bergman.  Almodovar even quotes himself, as the film that Mateo directs has a scene that overtly references his own Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

I wouldn’t say this is my favorite of all of Almodovar’s films but then he’s got quite a long filmography.  I think All About My Mother is more of a masterpiece, and films like Bad Education, Talk to Her and even the early Matador, are more perversely interesting, something I have come to expect from him.  But maybe that’s not fair: he should be allowed to drown us in a lush romance if he wants to.  It’s still a skillful and superlative film from one of the most uniquely interesting filmmakers to ever pick up a Super 8mm camera and teach himself how to tell stories for the screen.


Broken Embraces open November 20, 2009.

Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar; produced by Agustín Almodóvar and Esther García; edited by José Salcedo; Director of Photography, Rodrigo Prieto.  Released by Sony Pictures Classics.  Running time: 128 minutes.

With: Penélope Cruz (Lena); Lluís Homar (Mateo); Blanca Portillo (Judit); José Luis Gómez (Ernesto Martel); Tamar Novas (Diego) and Rubén  Ochandiano (Ray X.)