All Pedro Almodovar movies are perfect. Even the less-good ones. Whenever I recall my peak Cannes viewings over the last 20-plus years (although my first Cannes happened in ’92), there are always two or three Almodovar films swimming around. Despite the grueling experience of I’m So Excited, the pure-Almodovar-pleasure factor is something I’ve come to expect. I’m fairly certain it’ll be mine to savor when I see Pain and Glory sometime between 5.15 and 5.24..
From Film Comment review By Manu Yánez Murillo, posted on 3.22.19: “Pain and Glory is a heartrending, meditative, and deeply confessional culmination of Almodovar’s prolonged immersion in the waters of autofiction.
“The clues of this fictionalized self-portrait are hidden in plain sight: Banderas, in the role of a lifetime, wears Almodóvar’s messy hairstyle, flashy sweaters, and flowery shirts, and Salvador’s memories are in perfect sync with episodes from Almodóvar’s career. As a pretext for putting its physically, spiritually, and artistically stagnant protagonist into motion, the story knits one of its threads around a restoration of Sabor (Flavor), a movie Salvador directed 32 years earlier, to be presented at Madrid’s Spanish Cinematheque.
“Those happen to be the same number of years that have passed since the release of Law of Desire, whose restoration Almodóvar presented in 2017 at, yes, the Spanish Cinematheque. On that occasion he was accompanied by his greatest muse, Carmen Maura, while in Pain and Glory Salvador (the name is reminiscent of ‘Almodóvar’) intends to attend the premiere with Sabor’s star, a former and estranged alter ego played by Asier Etxeandia, in a veiled reference to actor Eusebio Poncela.
“It goes without saying that the third star of Law of Desire was Antonio Banderas, playing Poncela’s impulsive and psychotic young lover in his third collaboration with Almodóvar.”
From a Variety q & a with Almodovar and Pain and Glory star Antonio Banderas, conducted by Henry Chu:
Variety: “The whole style of the film feels stripped down. Is this a new phase in your filmmaking?”
Almodóvar: “Absolutely. The style, the narration, is a continuation of what I did with Julieta: much more restrained and austere. Visually, the colors in this new phase are still vibrant and intense, because I’m not turning my back on the coloring of my films. But the tone of the narrative is more stark. This is quite a challenge for me, being such a baroque director, to move into this new phase. I don’t know whether I’ll go back again to what I was doing before, because I don’t normally look ahead and forecast what my next steps are going to be.”