• Pain and Glory

6/20/20 (Sat), Tokyo

Almodovar in an unusually contemplative mood in this semi-autobiographical film. Antonio Banderas is an aging film director asked to speak at a remastered version of one of his hits from decades past. He reunites with the star of that work, who he hasn’t seen in the decades since due to “artistic differences”, i.e., the latter’s destructive use of heroin during the filming.

The actor teaches Banderas himself the pleasures of heroin, which, in addition to easing the various physical aches and pains he’s suffering, prompts him to reflect on his life through a series of flashbacks. At the end of the movie, he’s shown directing Penelope Cruz in a film about his life, suggesting that the flashbacks were film scenes rather than actual memories, i.e., that the director was recreating his life rather than simply recalling it. That challenges everything we have seen and accepted.

The meditative film is slow paced with few ups-and-downs or crazy Almodovar touches. The scenes in the director’s past are the film’s best part, beautifully realizing the poverty-stricken lives of the family (who literally live in a cave) without sliding into self-pity. The film pivots on two similar dubious coincidences: a man happens upon a play in which he is the subject, and the director happens upon a painting in an art exhibit in which he is the subject.

In the first instance, a man visiting Barcelona goes to a play in a tiny theater in which he turns out to be a major character. He learns that the play was written by Banderas, his former lover, and seeks him out. That fluke brings the director back in touch with his past in a very real way as the man, now happily married, gives him a passionate parting kiss in memory of what was. In the other case, Banderas gets an invitation to an art exhibit in which the main work turns out to be a drawing of him as a child, created by the older stud who he had tutored and innocently longed for in the old days. The brush with the past in the form of the heroin addict, old lover and portrait of the former student prompts him to create the autobiographical – or is it? – film that we have been watching all along.

Antonio Banderas is as good as he’s ever been, unafraid to look his age or show the character’s unattractive side. Penelope Cruz is superb as always as the young mother in the flashbacks, equaled by a wonderful Julieta Serrano as the now-aged mother. A very different Almodovar experience.