Direction: Pedro Almodovar
Country: Spain
Pain and Glory is a stunning, confessional statement by the fabulous Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar, who, at the age of 70, unveils his personal demons on the screen with respectable maturity. His story is strong, filled with weighty childhood memories, painful experiences, and unresolved relationships, all of them factors conducive to corporal pains, soul afflictions, and creative blockages.
Antonio Banderas is Salvador Mallo, a once successful filmmaker now confined to a life of reclusion in Madrid due to a restrictive aching spine, intrinsic asthma, panic and anxiety, and a multitude of other ailments, both physical and psychological.
Emotionally insecure and under the effect of anxiolytics, Salvador often revives his childhood in his long naps, picturing episodes of the small village in Valencia where he lived in the 60’s. Most of those episodes involve his late mother, Jacinta (Penélope Cruz), and Eduardo (César Vicente), the first man he was attracted to at the age of nine. Curiously, some expressions of the young Salvador, performed by Asier Flores, reminded me of the protagonist of Cinema Paradiso, also called Salvatore. Evocation or coincidence?
At the same time that memories keep emerging from his subconscious, Salvador reconnects with the actor Alberto Crespo (Asier Etxeandia), with whom he fell out 32 years before. The latter had become as torpid as the director, and they both seal their fresh association with heroin. Addiction knocks on Salvador’s door, but an incidental visit from a former lover, Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), helps him put life in perspective.
We hadn’t seen an Almodovar so lucid and passionate for so long, in what is an earnest examination of himself. Pain and Glory is affectionately crafted with courage and intimacy, being nourished by Banderas’ focused performance in order to triumph. Emotionally, we feel we are stepping on familiar Almodovar ground, but there’s a new breeze in his storytelling and a functional plasticity in his filmmaking style that makes this film rising above any of his recent works. In the end, hope and confidence illuminate both Salvador and Almodovar, which is something to be delighted for.
