Broken Embraces - Pedro Almodovar's latest

[Sonic Youth]

More reviews from Cannes. Overall, they're mixed.

Film Review: Broken Embraces
By Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter


CANNES -- While making a light comedy, a director and his female star engage in a passionate love affair that prompts emotional fireworks, jealousy and betrayal, not only for them but for those close to the pair in "Broken Embraces." These dual movies -- the on-set comedy and the off-set melodrama -- allow the prolific and always engaging writer-director Pedro Almodovar to speculate on cinema itself, on its imagery, iconic touchstones and capacity for clandestine observation.

While the movie as a whole is thoroughly engrossing and all the movie references and subplots involving the cinema world undoubtedly enrich his story, this is a pretty minor film from the filmmaker. It feels like more of an exercise in plotting and movie nostalgia than a story about real people.

By now though, Almodovar is a brand name, and his muse, Penelope Cruz, certainly adds potent star power, so the film should perform well in specialty venues when Sony Picture Classics releases it stateside on Nov. 20.

The opening credits are superimposed on a video image taken surreptitiously on the set of the stand-ins and then Cruz and co-star Lluis Homar. This nicely sets up the notion of the camera as the world's greatest spy: For in movies we, the audience, are always, in a sense, watching people's most intimate situations and seeing things the characters would not have us see.

The story concerns a man with two names who answers only to one. A car accident 14 years earlier robbed film director Mateo Blanco (Homar) of his eyesight and his great love Lena (Cruz). Once he recovered, he declared Blanco dead and adapted the pseudonym Harry Caine, which he puts on all the scripts he now writes with the aid of Diego (Blanca Portillo), the son of his former production manager Judit (Tamar Novas).

One night, while recovering from an accidental drug overdose, Diego asks Harry to tell the story of what happened 14 years ago. Surprisingly, Harry does.

The minute Harry -- no, Mateo then -- and Lena see each other, they fall in love. But she is the kept woman of Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez), a wealthy broker. Nonetheless, Mateo casts her in his comedy. Lena has always wanted to be an actress and, as a former escort and now a mistress, acting does come naturally to her.

Martel signs aboard as the film's producer in a vain attempt to maintain control over his lover. He even plants his son, Martel Jr. (Ruben Ochandiano), on the set, ostensibly to shoot a "making of" video, as a means to keep an eye on Lena.

Movie references begin to pile up. Mateo's comedy "Girls and Suitcases" is clearly a re-working of Almodovar's own "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." Noir elements, especially staircases that can have treacherous consequences, foreshadow the coming tragedy. Martel hires a lip reader to tell him what his lover is saying on the videotapes his son sneaks from the set. There is even a reference to "Peeping Tom," Michael Powell's 1960 prescient thriller about a young man who murders women and films their dying expressions with his movie camera.

For all this window dressing, "Broken Embraces" remains a 1950s-style Douglas Sirk melodrama with breathless revelations in the final reel. One or two stretch credibility about as far as it will go. Cruz and Homar do play their parts with flair though. Cruz, who is given an Audrey Hepburn hairdo in the movie within the movie, is glamorous, ambitious and utterly in love with her new man. Homar is incautious as Mateo but wry and ironic as Harry, a man devoted to his pleasures and writing but deliberately cut off from his previous self.

Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography is exquisite from the volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote to the many finely appointed interiors. And the close-ups of Cruz in various hairstyles and wigs are a kind of art work all by themselves. A score by longtime collaborator Alberto Iglesias evokes the many movies the director embraces in "Broken Embraces."


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“Broken” Record: Almodovar’s Latest Repeats His Greatest Hits
by Eric Kohn
indieWire

A scene from Pedro Almodovar's "Abrazos Rotos." Image courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival.Pedro Almodovar offers nothing new in his latest feature, “Abrazos Rotos” (“Broken Embraces”), but that’s probably enough for his devout followers. With solid performances and a script that’s never too hard on the ears, Spain’s superstar director merely repeats the themes and conflicts of his greatest hits. With secretive family issues, tortured artists, melodramatic events and slight humor all in play, Almodovar dutifully plays to his base.

Set in present day Madrid, the story revolves around Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar), a blind film director and writer who works under the pseudonym Harry Caine, a personality in which he subsumed himself after his wife died in the car crash years earlier that left him without his sight. Despite this traumatic background, Mateo comes across as a shrewd and unreasonably jolly presence, although that might result from his blatant attempt to avoid grieving for his loss. However, it also turns him into a rambunctious ladies’ man, which sets up the central conflict of the movie.

One of them, anyway. The cumulative impact of “Abrazos Rotos” cancels itself out with a far too dense network of plot points and tangential complications. The director and his team of actors—many of whom regularly appear in his movies—never lack the ability to deliver a watchable scene, but the movie can’t settle into a single cogent groove.

After we watch Mateo spend his time contemplating projects with his longtime friend Judit (Blanca Portillao) and her aspiring screenwriter son (Tamar Novas), “Broken Embraces” introduces Lena (Penelope Cruz), a troubled actress hopelessly entangled in an unhappy marriage to her much older former boss, Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez). The characters’ lives converge when Lena auditions for a role in Mateo’s next project, “Girl and Suitcases,” and falls for him. As he tries to get a handle on Ernesto’s rage while maintaining a grip on his creativity, Mateo continues to prevent himself from feeling sorrow over the loss of his wife.

But wait, as they say, there’s more: Mateo deals with the creepy presence of a man calling himself Ray X (Ruben Ochandiano) suffering from serious hate for his neglectful father, which he hopes to turn into a screenplay. Judit reveals a curiously underplayed secret about the identity of her son’s father, and Ernesto takes serious measures to prevent Mateo from completing his movie. Despite the reliance on elements of film noir and related genres, “Abrazos Rotos” mainly functions as a statement on the filmmaking process. “Films have to be finished,” Mateo concludes, “even if you do it blindly.” (It’s not the greatest moment in the history of wordplay.)

Despite the redundancy, there’s very little hyperbole involved in the suggestion that Almodovar can’t direct a bad scene. “Abrazos Rotos” flows naturally from moment to moment; it simply never amounts to a satisfactory whole, leaving no strong impression akin to the “Vertigo”-esque twist in Almodovar’s “Volver” or the surrealist flourishes in his wonderful early features, such as “Matador.” However, it does acknowledge the strengths of those works. As earlier reviews have pointed out, Mateo’s movie-within-the-movie unquestionably echoes Almodovar’s “Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” forcing an autobiographical quality on the entire production. By inserting his own legacy, Almodovar renders his complicated plot irrelevant, since the real star of the show is the director himself.

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Almodovar's Broken Embraces reels you in
Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian

Pedro Almodóvar has always managed to combine elegance and exuberance, and his latest movie is no exception: a richly enjoyable piece of work, slick and sleek, with a sensuous feel for the cinematic surfaces of things and, as ever, self-reflexively infatuated with the business of cinema itself. Yet I wonder if Almodóvar isn't in danger of retreading old ideas. It doesn't quite match the heartfelt power of his 2006 Cannes film festival contender, Volver; Broken Embraces is always conspicuously concerned with passion, but without being itself fully passionate.

The action of the movie unfolds in two periods: flashing back and forth between the present day and 1994. It is a measure of Almodóvar's absolute technical mastery, and that of his editor José Salcedo, that this is never disconcerting or confusing. Lluís Homar plays Mateo, a former film director who lost his sight in a car crash whose full tragic importance is only disclosed in the movie's closing act. Now he writes screenplays under his pen name "Harry Caine", a pseudonymity which parallels Mateo's yearning to escape his ruined real self for the fantasy-refuge of the cinema. A newspaper obituary of a shady financier, Ernesto Martel, tremendously played by José Luis Gómez, triggers memories of his movie-making career in the 90s: Martel bankrolled Mateo's final movie on condition that his mistress was given the lead.

This of course is Lena, played by Penélope Cruz in a state of almost hyperreal gorgeousness, a sublime beauty in whose presence Almodóvar's camera goes into a kind of swooning trance, and whose exquisiteness consists at least partly in its fabricated quality; she is part of cinema's magnificent artifice. When Lena poses for still shots in a Marilyn wig, an ecstatic Mateo tells her: "Don't smile, the wig is false enough." Naturally, Mateo and Lena begin an affair, and the obsessively jealous Martel gets his highly-strung gay son from a previous marriage to spy on them with a video camera, on the pretence of preparing a "making of" segment for the DVD. In torments, old Martel watches this grainy surveillance footage every night, like a producer watching the daily rushes, while a lip-reader must recite the lovers' amorous whisperings live.

The film-within-a-film motif is head-spinningly sophisticated, though the theme of cinema itself within cinema (traditionally rather overrated by cinephiles in terms of interest and importance) is kept fresh and alive through Almodóvar's sheer energy. His style harks back to Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk; the allusions are technically splendid and utterly confident, though this self-awareness is a little lacking in substance and weight. After the film is over, its images and characters may well vanish into the air leaving little or no residue in your memory, yet I defy anybody to watch it without a tingle of pure moviegoing pleasure.

• Peter Bradshaw is The Guardian's film critic

[The Original BJ]

Variety and Screen Daily both say the film is brilliantly made and very entertaining.

I would expect nothing less. I'm there.

[Sonic Youth]

Variety and Screen Daily both say the film is brilliantly made and very entertaining... but an unsatisfying misstep.


Broken Embraces
Los abrazos rotos (Spain)
By JONATHAN HOLLAND
Variety

Partly a film about films and partly a film about love, Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces" can't quite decide where its allegiances lie. A restless, rangy and frankly enjoyable genre-juggler that combines melodrama, comedy and more noir-hued darkness than ever before, the pic is held together by the extraordinary force of Almodovar's cinematic personality. But while its four-way in extremis love story dazzles, it never really catches fire. The Spanish helmer's biggest-budgeted and longest movie to date will get warm hugs from local auds on release March 18; headed for Cannes in May, it goes out Stateside via Sony Pictures Classics later this year.

There's a sense here that Almodovar, who's now a stylistic law unto himself, may be more interested in stretching himself technically than in engaging with issues of the wider world. Card-carrying fans can prepare themselves for a rare treat. But those who hoped the pic would extend the quieter, more personal mood shown in "Volver," as the 59-year-old helmer moves into the late phase of his career, will be disappointed to find that "Embraces" is made not of flesh and blood, but of celluloid.Harry Caine (Lluis Homar, "Bad Education") is a blind screenwriter and former director whose real name, which he abandoned after losing his sight in a car crash, is Mateo Blanco. News arrives of the death of corrupt stockbroker Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez), who once produced a movie Blanco directed, "Girls and Suitcases."

Blanco's former production manager, Judit (Blanca Portillo), who holds a candle for him, seems nervous at the news. And then a pretentious young man calling himself Ray X (Ruben Ochandiano), who turns out to be Martel's son, asks Blanco to help write a script that's intended as an act of vengeance against his neglectful father.

The film now flashes back to 1992, when Martel fell for his secretary, a wannabe actress-cum-part-time call girl, Lena (Penelope Cruz). By 1994, he and Lena are an item. However, when Lena auditions for "Girls and Suitcases," Blanco also falls for her.

Chagrined, Martel gets his son (also Ochandiano, here as a wildly gauche, camp teenager) to spy on Blanco and Lena under the guise of making a docu about the shoot. Watching Martel's life fall apart, as a lip reader (Lola Duenas) decodes Lena and Blanco's conversations in the boy's footage, is hilarious. But any compassion for Martel evaporates in the laughter -- one of several moments when the film deliberately undermines a particular mood.

Following a disastrous trip to Ibiza, Martel and Lena break up, and Martel initiates a slow, costly revenge designed to destroy Blanco. Hereon, much of the action takes place amid the volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote, opening things visually even as the drama becomes more and more claustrophobic.

Script moves fluidly back and forth in time, with superb editing by regular Jose Salcedo, and some of the witty, pointed dialogue is among Almodovar's best. The labyrinthine plot is thick with twists, turns and resonances. But a couple of questions linger -- especially that the revelations in the final reel would hardly have remained under wraps for 14 years, given Blanco's suspicions.

Cruz delivers a compelling, subtle perf as a woman continually aware that the shadow of tragedy hovers over her. But because her character is effectively split into three -- Magdalena the grieving daughter, Lena the actress and lover, and Pina in "Girls and Suitcases" -- auds will struggle to locate an emotional center behind the thesp's dizzying range of costumes and wigs.

Homar, who literally wears Almodovar's own '90s wardrobe, makes a commanding screen presence as Caine/Blanco, but the character's reactions to his multiple tragedies (including being blinded) seem stoical to the point of catatonia. Gomez and Portillo are solid in theslightly smaller roles of Martel and Judit, respectively. Multiple cameos -- including one by the helmer's producer brother, Agustin -- are enjoyable, though none help move the story forward.

Visually, the pic is an exquisite treat. Every richly hued wall is covered with eye-candy artwork, every doorway reps a second level of framing, and there is beauty even in the scattered contents of a drawer or in a pile of torn-up photos. Closeups are regularly used, particularly of Cruz's hypnotically photogenic features.

Cinematic references abound. Several scenes featuring dangerous staircases recall Henry Hathaway's '40s noir "Kiss of Death." Pic's title alludes to the Pompeii scene in Roberto Rossellini's 1954 classic, "Voyage to Italy," which Lena and Blanco watch in Lanzarote. And the entertaining "Girls and Suitcases" is a clear homage to Almodovar's 1988 hit, "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." Score by longtime collaborator Alberto Iglesias superbly evokes the moods and movies "Embraces" is so in thrall to.

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Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos)
Barry Byrne in Madrid
Screendaily


Dir/scr: Pedro Almodóvar. Spain. 2009. 127 mins.

A lavish, noirish melodrama sparkling with Pedro Almodóvar's trademark humour, Broken Embraces - the director's eagerly awaited 17th feature - will thrill his loyal fanbase but perhaps leave a more general public dazed rather than dazzled. Ravishing in its artifice and outfitted with all of Almodóvar's stylistic tricks, this tale of desire, power, duplicity and fate is self-consciously steeped in noir conventions and provides Penelope Cruz with a sleek post-Oscar vehicle.

Almodóvar's last foray into noir territory, 2004's Bad Education, was his weakest performer of the past decade, grossing $40.2m worldwide – a dip of over $10m from 2002's Talk To Her. The stakes are higher with Broken Embraces, coming hot on the heels of the sensational Volver ( 2006, $85.5m worldwide) and boasting Almodovar's biggest budget to date at $15m. Broken Embraces will follow El Deseo's tried and tested path of a Spring Spanish release followed by a potential Cannes berth before going out internationally through its usual partners (Sony for the US, Pathe for France, Focus, etc) in time for year-end awards notice. While its final tally may not quite equal that of Volver, Broken Embraces will see Almodovar retain his status as the go-to European director for wider arthouse audiences.

Devilishly clever and shrewdly cast with a stable of Almodóvar regulars, the storyline casts a particularly gorgeous Cruz as an actress struggling to escape the suffocating constraints of the aging millionaire lover who has bankrolled her career. The film is awash with references to the noir genre, Italian neo-realism and even to Almodóvar's own quirky oeuvre. Stylistic nods to films including Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place and Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful form part of Almodovar's valentine to cinema....

[Spoliers deleted}

...Fans of Almodovar will get plenty of what they expect here – rich saturated colours, hyper plotting, stylistic pyrotechnics and off-centre comedy. But there are carefully nuanced male characters too and the bleak, distant tone coupled with the unassuaged pain of the leads is a new departure for the director.

Almodóvar might seem at temperamental odds with the genre, though. His films tend to be shot through with sentimentality and romanticism, he often becomes too enamoured of his characters – particularly his female leads – and he is perhaps too impassioned for the somnambulist noir style. What's more, his jaunty Madrid is hardly a noir cesspool of sleazy dives and dark shadows.

Yet in the more successful first half of the film he elegantly pulls it off. Flashbacks and splintered chronology, high- and low-angle shots, dramatic close-ups, vertiginous stairways – these are all the currency of haute noir and Almodóvar spends lavishly as he sets his hapless characters up. DoP Rodrigo Prieto, in his first outing with Almodovar, works his magic to capture Lena and Mateo memorably in frames within the frame, such as camera lenses and car windows, underscoring enclosure and entrapment, and glorious shots of the leads through mirrors suggest duplicity and masquerade.

True, the director can't quite bring himself to treat his characters with the Olympian detachment noir usually demands. Characters in the Almodóvar universe can't do deadpan delivery, and perhaps throwing in the towel, Almodóvar deliciously parodies the typical Veronica Lake-Alan Ladd repartee when he has the lip reader interpret what they're saying in a marvellous monotone monologue.

Yet ultimately, Almodóvar doesn't seem comfortable in the cramped noir world of the Madrid film studio and mansion he has built for his pawns, and the second half of the film sees the characters flee to the wide open spaces of the island of Lanzarote. There, the film slips into lush, romantic melodrama against a bleak volcanic landscape. But the jealous Martel, placed firmly in the background, has no further screen presence, as Almodóvar concentrates on exploring the couple's doomed love. With the action moving ponderously towards a baffling denouement, we enter the terrain of high melodrama – sensational revelations and narrative twists. In the midst of all this, there's an over-long clip from the quirky comedy film-within-a-film.

It's symptomatic of the strain in Broken Embraces, which sees the clashing genres of noir, melodrama and comedy vie for supremacy, but it's a rollicking struggle that, in the hands of consummate ringmaster Almodóvar, is a joy to watch.