Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar)

[Grouchy]

[Grouchy]

I like the above poster better than the more widespread one because it announces from the start what an autobiographic film this is for Almodóvar. His alter ego is Salvador Mallo (Banderas), a film director who has not been able to get any work done in four years due to a laundry list of diseases and depression. The film goes back and forth between his childhood memories and his struggle to get his head above water. True to Almodóvar's best form, there's heartbreaking drama (I mean, seriously, this movie made me bawl my eyes out) mixed with casual comedy and a colorful array of characters.

Fans will not be disappointed and non-fans will hate it, but there's the implication that this is one of his most personal works, dealing with subjects such as the death of the parents, the meaning of making art and the friends that died at the hands of their own addictions.

[Ezee E]

I like the above poster better than the more widespread one because it announces from the start what an autobiographic film this is for Almodóvar. His alter ego is Salvador Mallo (Banderas), a film director who has not been able to get any work done in four years due to a laundry list of diseases and depression. The film goes back and forth between his childhood memories and his struggle to get his head above water. True to Almodóvar's best form, there's heartbreaking drama (I mean, seriously, this movie made me bawl my eyes out) mixed with casual comedy and a colorful array of characters.

Fans will not be disappointed and non-fans will hate it, but there's the implication that this is one of his most personal works, dealing with subjects such as the death of the parents, the meaning of making art and the friends that died at the hands of their own addictions.

It's been a bit since a good Almodovar. Looking forward to it.

[Peng]

Saw this again just so I’m able to say I have watched an Almodóvar film in theater, even if the Thai subtitle is so not up to standard that I have to focus on the English one instead. This lessens on rewatch though, now that the whole structure is known in advance. Banderas and the wistful present scenes remain great (especially “The Addiction” and that powerfully subdued reunion, the latter one of Almodóvar's all-timer), but I feel the director struggles a bit with flashbacks. The childhood ones feel purely, almost flatly functional in the early going, which improve once it starts being a “first desire” layer to the present, but his late mother flashback sticks out so much in the overall trajectory of the film that it should have been either moved up earlier or removed completely. That sublime last scene reverberates backwards enough to counter any non-present-scene lethargy halfway through though. 8/10

[baby doll]

Fans will not be disappointed and non-fans will hate it

Notwithstanding Julieta (which I haven't seen), this is the first Almodóvar film I've really enjoyed since Talk to Her. In everything else he's done since, there comes a point where the mechanics of the plot overwhelm the characters, so I was perhaps overly delighted here with Almodóvar's decision to make a laid-back character study.