Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Last night, watched Pain and Glory directed and written by Pedro Almodóvar, with GH, WL, and CC. The Spanish title Dolor y gloria sounds so much better and fitting. The film is a rich meditation on love, desire, family, and the creative process. How much do you really love your lover if you won't abandon your Madrid-centered artistic ambition to help him cure his drug addiction? How much do you really love your mother if you won't stay in her village of caves? After the success, will there be time to make it up to lover and mother? Is the failure to make it up to them related to one's creative crisis? Antonio Banderas was superbly subtle as the aging filmmaker Salvador Mallo. Penelope Cruz and Julieta Serrano were wonderful too as the mother at different ages. César Vicente was the dishy young man who was the director's first desire, when as a boy he was first awakening to the world of men. César Vicente with the director Pedro Almodóvar

I think I may have gone off Almodovar. I could not watch to the end his tale of obsessive love (of Antonio Banderas's crazy rich young man for Eusebio Poncela's narcissistic filmmaker). There was little that was new in the film's exploration of obsession and narcissism, and so I was left with two unpleasant characters for whom it was hard even to feel repulsion. The acting was fine (titillating to see Banderas buggered by Poncela), but the plot was thin. The one bright spot was the portrait of the filmmaker's transsexual sibling. Carmen Maura was by turns terrified and tender, and gave the film what heart it had.

This may be my favorite Almodovar so far. "Live Flesh" may not be as haunting as "Talk to Her" or as moving as "Volver" but it is an idea perfectly executed. No self-indulgent bulges nor forced shortcuts, it is as well-proportioned as its dishy lead Victor Plaza (Liberto Rabal). Love and its obsessions play out with formal symmetry among two married couples and an outsider. Elena (the very beautiful Francesca Neri) and David (Javier Bardem) are married, but Victor loves Elena. Sancho (Jose Sancho) and Clara (Angela Molina) are married, but David had an affair with Clara, and she has now fallen for Victor. After learning of David's affair with Clara, Elena made love to Victor. David wants to use Sancho to kill Victor, but finds out, from Victor, that Sancho, having found out about David's affair with Clara, fired the gun in Victor's hand at David and crippled him. David goes ahead to tell Sancho of Clara's affair with Victor. When Sancho t...

Leo Macias, played by a vivifying Marisa Paredes, cannot accept her marriage is dead. Unable to write the romance novels she churned out under the pseudonym Amanda Gris, she takes a job as a book reviewer with newspaperman Angel (Juan Echanove). Not knowing she is Gris, Angel assigns her to review her own book. He also falls in love with her but she cannot return his love, since she still hopes her husband would return to her. When her husband Paco (Imanol Arias) kills all hope, she is so depressed that she attempts suicide, and then leaves Madrid with her mother to return to the latter's village. Weaving with the village women, Leo may recuperate but her desire for life is only rekindled when she finds out that her anti-romantic novel she trashed helped to fund a flamenco dance production put up by the son of her cook. So art saves her finally, saves her for life. A comment on imdb credited this film with Almodover's turn from formless farces to rich melodramas. The Flower o...

Pedro Almodovar's "Volver" has a melodramatic plot, melodramatic characters and melodramatic atmospherics. Yet, it does not end up as melodramatic in effect, at least not in the negative sense. Its depiction of the bond between mothers and daughters is genuinely poignant. This unexpected result can also be found in John Irving's novels. I am thinking of "The World According to Garp" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany" here. What makes the film and the novels more than the sum of its elements seems to me to be their spirit of invention. Bad melodramatic is garish in its use of stock of situations, characters and images. I find the wit and imagination in the film and novels technicolored instead.