Showing posts with label Pedro Almodóvar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pedro Almodóvar. Show all posts

Sunday 11 August 2019

Almodóvar's Pain and Glory (Dolor y gloria) (2019) : A first-blush response (yet - somehow ? - a work in progress)

Almodóvar's Pain and Glory (2019) : A first-blush response, after a preview screening

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


Almodóvar's Pain and Glory (Dolor y gloria) (2019) : A first-blush response (yet - somehow ? - a work in progress), after a preview screening at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, on Sunday 11 August 2019 at 5.30 p.m.



Early on, Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory (Dolor y gloria) (2019) might have resembled a re-make - not unwelcome ! - of Broken Embraces (2009)*, in more accessible form - with elements of (1963) and others of his films such as, most obviously, Bad Education (La mala educación) (2004), thrown in for good measure :

However, in Pain and Glory, Almodóvar outgrows both those references, and a sly wink at Cinema Paradiso (1988) (not to this film alone), to bed in and then engagingly transcend such usual pre-occupations of his as betrayal, gay love, happenstance, and the physical body.


Enemies of Promise** ~ Others are the saboteurs - or is it the enemy within ?


Indulged, without the ostensible - if not actual - charm of Fellini's Guido Anselmi, Salva(tor)*** (Antonio Banderas) has been given the medical history (which he relates / narrates himself), if not necessarily of a hypochondriac, then, it is soon suggested to us, of someone who has neglected self and others. Yet he does not, or will not, attribute fault for his ills except to those others : in some measure, although the picture is exaggerated for effect, we could or should all be able to see where guilt has similarly held us back (and may even have become expressed in body and / or mind).


Salva is thus writ large so that we cannot but see both his condition, and how Almodóvar fleshes out its origins for the character at the same time as for us - indeed, as Fellini does, with Guido in (though this is not , nor even Nine). (Or, equally, in Allen's tender tribute to the film, in Stardust Memories (1980), with Sandy Bates (Allen himself)**** ?)

RT img

Though perhaps, but without his bitter-sweet poignancy, there is actually a closer resemblance to Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo****) in Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza / (Immense Beauty) (2013), and to what - and how - Jep (re-)discovers about himself... ?


Caveat :

Admittedly, what follows is on the basis of having skipped The Skin I Live in (La piel que habito) (2011), having avoided being adversely reminded of the camp excellence of Alan Cumming (Sebastian Flight), Forbes Masson (Steve McCracken), Siobhan Redmond (Shona Spurtle) and Patrick Ryecart in the t.v. series The High Life (1994) by I'm So Excited ! (2013), and just plain cleverly missing a theatrical release of Julieta (2016). However, this is still a more cutesy - dare one say commercial ? - film than Broken Embraces and therefore something of a shock... (And, as with Yorgos Lanthimos, maybe the earlier films have more imaginative power and depth ?)




End-notes :

* It seemed that the ink was, as it were, no sooner dried on Match Point (2005) than its themes were re-worked in the grief- and guilt-ridden Cassandra's Dream (2007) - the latter of which, though far better, few seem to know...

** The title of a book by Cyril Connolly, which reminisces and reflects on British public schools, amongst other things.

*** Maybe wrongly, but one reads an irony into those called 'Saviour' in films, e.g. in Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962).

**** Perhaps reassuringly, Ryan Gilbey (in RT [edn 24-30 August 2019, pp. 32-33]) 'touches the same bases' in The World of Cinema : the Fellini, Allen's Stardust and even Almodóvar's own Embraces...

***** Another 'Anthony', and St Anthony (presumably of Alexandria, not Padua - unless Salva is what / who 'is lost'?) indeed has a cameo in Dolor y gloria.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Saturday 14 July 2018

Some notes from a viewing of Almodóvar's Live Flesh (1997)

Some notes from a viewing of Almodóvar's Live Flesh (Carne trémula) (1997)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


14 July

Some notes from a viewing, on DVD, of Almodóvar's Live Flesh (Carne trémula) (1997)



They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow :
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense




Christmas Eve 1970 (Franco's Spain / excuses for repression)
Victor - Bus - Centro


A cast that is a close-knit quintet - in adapting Ruth Rendell, Pedro Almodóvar gives us the sort of love-circle of a play by Jean Racine, which (Samuel) Beckettt gently parodied at the start of Murphy, or we may know from (Arthur) Schnitzler and La Ronde... :

David ~ Javier Bardem
Elena ~ Francesca Neri
Victor ~ Liberto Rabal
Clara ~ Ángela Molina
Sancho ~ José Sancho


'We are two tear-drops
In a song'


Like a musical
Or an old film



David - re-enacting Rear Window (1954), with an immensely more mobile version of James Stewart (as L. B. 'Jeff' Jefferies)

Sancho - married 12yrs - hits wife
Victor - in reading the Book of Genesis, sees Moses referring to him

Bienvenido mat


'You need me more than he does'

'Yes, you're offensively honest'

'I'll keep exploiting your guilt complex'


Ends in 1996 - stopped being shitless




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thursday 2 May 2013

Who's excited - about what ? ! (Or Predictions about I'm So Excited ! (2013))

Who's excited - about what ? ! (Or Predictions about I'm So Excited ! (2013) (Los amantes pasajeros))


More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


3 May

Who's excited - about what ? ! (Or Predictions about I'm So Excited ! (2013) (Los amantes pasajeros))








If you don't know what The High Life is - whatever the title lyric says - that's not extraordinary...


I like the way that, in his review, Empire's critic, David Hughes, has alluded to the running joke in Woody Allen's much misunderstood Stardust Memories (1980) :

An unshakeable tolerance for high camp and lowbrow humour may be required to fully appreciate Almodóvar's broad, bawdy comedy - even for fans of his early, funny films.

As I read the rest of Hughes' review (a tongue-twister in his office, no doubt), I found myself also reminded of that epsiode of - what else ! - Father Ted...



Update

As at 9 May, Rotten Tomatoes says that 34% of audiences, and 60% of critics, liked the film*...


End-notes

* For comparison, the equivalent percentages for Broken Embraces (2009) are 74% and 81%.