After a filmic silence of about three years, on the verge of his seventieth birthday, Pedro Almodovar has released Pain and Glory, the twenty-first motion picture of the award-winning Spanish director.
Nobody, not even Almodovar's sternest critics, could deny the enormous success of his movies, both commercially as well as with the critics: Palmes, Goyas, Oscars, BAFTAs, Davids, Lions, Cesars, no award is missing in the trophy cupboard of the director born in the small village of Calzada de Calatrava, the ispiration for the hamlet of Paterna in this film, which is not exception and has been awarded three major Goyas for best movie, direction and original screenplay.
The domestic success of this movie has not been replicated abroad though, and for good reasons. Pain and Glory, although has some interesting aspects, like the excellent use of flash-backs, the measured and delicate performance of Antonio Banderas and the constructive, even if not entirely unexpected ending, doesn't raise above a fair and stylish exercise of nostalgic introspection that frankly is disappointing for a director that was used to gift audience and critics with an approach to the cinema story-telling surely innovative and sometimes even iconoclastic, although alternating movies of a very high standard such as Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Talk to Her with others of a more modest, normal levels
And Pain and Glory unfortunately belongs to the latter group of films. Almodovar honesty in identifying himself with the reclusive and almost anagrammatic director Salvador Mello is evident but remains distant, doesn't emotionally engulf the audience, it remains far on the silver screen. It allows to be seen and noted, supported by a sophisticated soundtrack and by the expected 100% Almodovar settings but appears entropic, too much self-centered and solely relying on stereotypes falsely disruptive and revolutionary (the heroin, the self-reclusive artist, the psychotropic drugs, the writers' block) to make its way into the viewers' hearts and minds; the film is, all in all, unfortunately not much more than yet another, almost due, tribute to a great director looking into himself! Regrettably, more for himself than for the public. Almodovar is good, no question, and Salvador Mello's childhood memories are skillfully mixed with his present made of detached and hypochondriac emotional and artistic drifting, but the path to the end of the tunnel, or back to the found-again set lighting is not fully convincing. Like a new Ulysses sailing the tempestuous seas and treacherous seafloors of the mind, Salvador Mallo needs thirty-two years to return to the island of creativity, while the Homeric Ulysses took only ten years to cover the about 650 miles between Troy and Ithaca.
The movie title is catchy, suggesting a painful road to artistic glory, but what is left to the viewer after the credits is only the little pain of witnessing a very much appreciated director drifting away from the cinema creativity and towards a bland product of small and stale madelaines that have the aftertaste more of a time lost than regained.
The domestic success of this movie has not been replicated abroad though, and for good reasons. Pain and Glory, although has some interesting aspects, like the excellent use of flash-backs, the measured and delicate performance of Antonio Banderas and the constructive, even if not entirely unexpected ending, doesn't raise above a fair and stylish exercise of nostalgic introspection that frankly is disappointing for a director that was used to gift audience and critics with an approach to the cinema story-telling surely innovative and sometimes even iconoclastic, although alternating movies of a very high standard such as Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Talk to Her with others of a more modest, normal levels
And Pain and Glory unfortunately belongs to the latter group of films. Almodovar honesty in identifying himself with the reclusive and almost anagrammatic director Salvador Mello is evident but remains distant, doesn't emotionally engulf the audience, it remains far on the silver screen. It allows to be seen and noted, supported by a sophisticated soundtrack and by the expected 100% Almodovar settings but appears entropic, too much self-centered and solely relying on stereotypes falsely disruptive and revolutionary (the heroin, the self-reclusive artist, the psychotropic drugs, the writers' block) to make its way into the viewers' hearts and minds; the film is, all in all, unfortunately not much more than yet another, almost due, tribute to a great director looking into himself! Regrettably, more for himself than for the public. Almodovar is good, no question, and Salvador Mello's childhood memories are skillfully mixed with his present made of detached and hypochondriac emotional and artistic drifting, but the path to the end of the tunnel, or back to the found-again set lighting is not fully convincing. Like a new Ulysses sailing the tempestuous seas and treacherous seafloors of the mind, Salvador Mallo needs thirty-two years to return to the island of creativity, while the Homeric Ulysses took only ten years to cover the about 650 miles between Troy and Ithaca.
The movie title is catchy, suggesting a painful road to artistic glory, but what is left to the viewer after the credits is only the little pain of witnessing a very much appreciated director drifting away from the cinema creativity and towards a bland product of small and stale madelaines that have the aftertaste more of a time lost than regained.