IN A global film market saturated with new releases, a new Pedro Almodóvar title remains an event. His 21st feature finds him in a reflective mood, confronting memory and mortality in a film that is elegant, subtle and, by this director’s standards, surprisingly restrained.
The focus in Pain and Glory is on men, unusual for Almodóvar, though not without precedent. Antonio Banderas plays celebrated gay filmmaker Salvador, essentially Almodóvar by another name, who finds himself in a crisis (not mid-life, more like three-quarters), debilitated by back pain and unable to work. The past seems determined to haunt him — not only his childhood in rural Spain, played out in flashback scenes, but his early career, in the form of fading actor Alberto (Asier Etxeandia). He and Salvador fell out 30 years ago during the making of acclaimed film Sabor, and when they are asked to reunite for a Q&A, old resentments resurface.
Antonio Banderas as Salvador Mallo in Pain and Glory by Pedro Almodóvar
It’s not the first time Almodóvar has toyed with “auto-fiction” by making his protagonist a filmmaker. Eusebio Poncela played a successful gay filmmaker in Law of Desire (1987), Lluís Homar a former director in Broken Embraces (2009). But Pain and Glory is clearly his most explicitly autobiographical work to date. Some viewers familiar with the Almodóvar universe may be expecting more sex, more melodrama, more fun. With age, however, has come moderation. This is exemplified by a scene in which Salvador is reunited with the love of his life (Leonardo Sbaraglia) after many years apart, only to turn down the offer of one last night of passion, settling for a kiss. Similarly, we naturally expect the plotline involving heroin to take a more dramatic turn, either completely taking over Salvador’s life or dragging his recovered junkie ex back into the abyss. Instead, Salvador enjoys a fairly brief infatuation with the drug before thinking better and flushing his last dose down the toilet.
Some ideas from Almodóvar’s earlier work reappear, like the longing of Salvador’s mother Jacinta (Julieta Serrano) for her native village and her desire to die there, previously explored in What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984) through Chus Lampreare’s character, whom Almodóvar has acknowledged was inspired by his own mother. The touching mother and adult son scenes in Pain and Glory allude to an underlying tension between lifestyles that could not be more different: the religious, rural, poor world of Jacinta and the liberal, urban, consumerist world inhabited and documented by her gay son. Shortly before her death, she accuses Salvador of portraying her ilk as “rednecks” in his films. On the contrary, protests a wounded Salvador, he could not treat them with more respect or devotion. This is a telling insight into the creative friction that runs through Almodóvar’s work.
Penelope Cruz as Jacinta in Pain and Glory by Pedro Almodóvar
Salvador, by his own admission, spends most of his time dozing, and the present day strand of Pain and Glory does have a somewhat sleepy quality. Banderas’ performance is muted, conveying the reduced emotional spectrum of a man grasping through the fog of depression. Almodóvar pays much attention to the day-to-day mundanities of advancing age and ill health: the cocktail of pills Salvador gulps down every evening, the cushions he places carefully on the floor whenever he has to kneel. It’s not glamorous, whatever we may imagine the lifestyle of a world-renowned filmmaker to be. After a certain point, Almodóvar implies, the accolades blur into one, tending towards the surreal. Responding to an invitation to a well-paid speaking opportunity abroad, Salvador simply muses, ‘why do they like me so much in Iceland?’. It’s a moment of deadpan comedy in a film of few laughs.
The trials and tribulations of the rich and famous could, of course, make for unsympathetic viewing. Fortunately, the childhood scenes provide the film with its emotional heart, Penélope Cruz memorable as a younger Jacinta struggling to make a life for her precocious son (Asier Flores) in their strange cave-like dwelling. With the arrival of handsome young handyman Eduardo (César Vicente), we are back on the familiar Almodóvarian territory of physical desire, at once sexy and sensitively handled.
Breathtaking performance by Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory
As we have come to expect, the production is slick throughout. Particularly enjoyable are the clever transitions from the present day to childhood scenes, like a restaurant pianist transforming into the seminary choirmaster who first identifies the young Salvador’s singing talent. We’re also treated to a surprisingly elaborate sequence which takes us on an animated tour of Salvador’s various ailments, physical and mental. Almodóvar has certainly come a long way from his debut feature Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980), which struck the opposite balance between style and content: cheap, punky production values married with plenty of scandalous episodes (a bourgeois housewife gets urinated on in the middle of a knitting lesson, to name one). Some fans may conclude that too much rebelliousness has been traded away for maturity over the years.
The film ends with a neat meta-narrative twist, the lesson being that sometimes the only way to move forwards is to look back. Even in a storied, successful life, the glory may mostly be outweighed by the pain; making sense of it all, Almodóvar suggests, is what art is for.
by Jackson Caines
Pain and Glory can be watched in UK cinemas now