(Amarga Navidad)
Country: SP
Technical: col/2.39:1 111m
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit
Synopsis:
A world famous film director, who has not made a film in a while, begins a new script about a cult, that is to say not so successful, woman director similarly troubled by a mother's death and her own health problems. He then proceeds to find roles for his personal assistant, her successor who is in love with him, her lover, and the lover's son who has died tragically.
Review:
Needless to say, Almodóvar finds room for still another 'woman on the verge', and another son, the better to compound his Chinese boxes as he shuttles between a Christmas holiday weekend in 2004 (with Nokia mobile phones) and a present in 2026. The moral arguments around this blurring of the lines between fact and fiction are given double weight by the screenplay, as if the director were exorcising some of his own guilt from past works here, and the overall exercise does recall Bertrand Blier's Notre histoire, with its repeated 'false starts'. Far more elegant it is, though, with the full Almodóvar treatment of primary coloured costumes and fittings, Lanzarote locations and searing canción performance; a pity that the Iglesias score is actually below par, resembling a Karl Jenkins knock-off, and the ending is left disarmingly open, presumably portending that artistic creation and inspiration are relentless.
(Amarga Navidad)
Country: SP
Technical: col/2.39:1 111m
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit
Synopsis:
A world famous film director, who has not made a film in a while, begins a new script about a cult, that is to say not so successful, woman director similarly troubled by a mother's death and her own health problems. He then proceeds to find roles for his personal assistant, her successor who is in love with him, her lover, and the lover's son who has died tragically.
Review:
Needless to say, Almodóvar finds room for still another 'woman on the verge', and another son, the better to compound his Chinese boxes as he shuttles between a Christmas holiday weekend in 2004 (with Nokia mobile phones) and a present in 2026. The moral arguments around this blurring of the lines between fact and fiction are given double weight by the screenplay, as if the director were exorcising some of his own guilt from past works here, and the overall exercise does recall Bertrand Blier's Notre histoire, with its repeated 'false starts'. Far more elegant it is, though, with the full Almodóvar treatment of primary coloured costumes and fittings, Lanzarote locations and searing canción performance; a pity that the Iglesias score is actually below par, resembling a Karl Jenkins knock-off, and the ending is left disarmingly open, presumably portending that artistic creation and inspiration are relentless.
