Photo Credit: Sony Pictures Classics
Almodóvar gets personal in ‘Pain & Glory’, his best film since ‘Broken Embraces’
Written and directed by: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz, Asier Etxeandia, and Leonardo Sbaraglia
“Pain & Glory” – “The cinema of my childhood always smells of piss, and of jasmine, and of the summer breeze.” – Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas)
Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film is about living with pain, both physical and emotional.
It’s about reflecting on childhood.
It’s about him….mostly.
“Pain & Glory” is not an Almodóvar autobiography, but he pours his feelings, shades and experiences into his on-screen character, director Salvador Mallo.
It’s 2019, and Salvador is in his 50s or 60s. He suffers from a back injury and complains of other ailments. He lives alone in a beautiful Madrid flat, surrounded by stylish, modern future, and enormous artworks are displayed across the walls. He does not entertain, does not pursue relationships, does not seek out friends, and does not call family, and the latter, because his parents have both died.
Salvador is not writing a screenplay or filming a movie, so solitude is his most loyal companion, and he contemplates the present and past, as well as the logical and illogical links between the two.
To ground and fill this personal picture, Almodóvar calls upon his two most-trusted actors, Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, and they have starred – together and separately - in so many of his movies, including “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988), “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” (1989), “All About My Mother” (1999), “Volver” (2006), “Broken Embraces” (2009), and “The Skin I Live In” (2012).
Cruz plays Salvador’s mother Jacinta in a supporting role, and - most appropriately - supports her son, as he grows up in their small Spanish town, a place where modern creature comforts are woefully absent. For instance, we see Jacinta washing clothes in a nearby stream rather than pressing “Wash” on her in-house Whirlpool. She is stripped-down and usually worn-out, but Salvador’s happiness and growth are her top priorities. Piles of cash may be nonexistent in their humble abode and lives, but love between mother and son is plentiful and real.
Love without total understanding.
Although Jacinta feels a sense of belonging in this nestled community, Salvador doesn’t fit in, and she is acutely aware.
“Pain & Glory”, however, spends most of its time with Salvador as an adult, and after watching Banderas on-screen for just a few minutes, we become acutely aware that he’s channeling Almodóvar. If nothing else, Salvador’s/Banderas’ highly-perched hair gives it away. Although vastly successful, Salvador still does not fit in with his surroundings. For different reasons, but that sentiment still lingers years and years later.
This is a gentle picture.
Without explosive reveals, mysteries or a family crisis, the film embraces a man who just might stumble into inner peace through a pair of old connections and a temporary stillness in his restless mind that strings thin, but determined, threads towards his past.
The film’s joy comes from Banderas’ nuanced, quiet performance, as he attempts to navigate Salvador through previously-unexplored waters, while also offering a bona fide opportunity to live through some of Almodóvar’s struggles and triumphs, and not through stark peaks and valleys. Small discoveries without blatantly-obvious aha moments. All cannot be ascertained with a 115-minute runtime, but significant understandings can be held.
In 1992’s “A River Runs Through It”, director Robert Redford narrates author Norman Maclean’s words, “Long ago, when I was a young man, my father said to me, ‘Norman, you like to write stories,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ Then he said, ‘Someday, when you’re ready, you might tell our family story, only then will you understand, and what happened and why.’”
“Pain & Glory” carries a similar, rich theme, and the film is also blessed with swathes of Almodóvar’s life, without telling a pure autobiography. After the watching the film, dive into his 2019 interviews with The Guardian, The British Film Institute and The Jakarta Post to help discern between film-fact and film-fiction.
In the meantime, walk into a “Pain & Glory” screening for a lucid, gratifying tale about the fogginess of being human.
(3/4 stars)
Jeff – a member of the Phoenix Critics Circle – has penned film reviews since 2008, graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and is a certified Rotten Tomatoes critic. Follow Jeff and the Phoenix Film Festival on Twitter @MitchFilmCritic and @PhoenixFilmFest, respectively.
