Pain & Glory Reviews

The aging director at the center of Pain and Glory may call himself Salvador Mallo, but one glance at the giant silhouette on the poster lets you know it’s really Pedro Almodóvar. Crafting one of his most personal and autobiographical works, Almodóvar reveals more of where his provocative worldview and vibrant artistry springs from and invites several of his famous friends along for the ride. Not quite the career capper it threatens to be, please don’t quietly into that goodnight, Pedro, Pain and Glory is still one of his typically mesmerizing Escher-like creations.

 

Almodóvar is less in the mood for subversion and more in confessional spirit with his two-track narrative that finds Salvador as both infirmed artist and young boy. An opening voiceover narration, as is his tradition, provides context for where Salvador is in his present life, which is not a great place. Depression, anxiety, severe migraines, back problems, tinnitus – these are just some of the ailments sapping him of his creative powers, and that’s before we really start delving into his emotional problems in a more profound way.

 

We go back in time to a young boy traveling with his mother (Penélope Cruz in youth, Julieta Serrano in old age) to their new cavernous house in Paterna. Quite literally, as their house is a whitewashed cave that’s been converted to a home. Preternaturally gifted and precociously talented, he teaches a laborer named Eduardo (César Vicente) to read and write. Salvador gets his portrait painted by the soulful man and experiences his first erotic awakening when he fetches a towel for Eduardo after he takes a sponge bath in their home.

 

The sensuality and eroticism of Almodóvar’s cinema, most explicitly in his use of color, is one of his greatest trademarks. Eduardo’s bath features whites that are nearly blinding as they transform and highlight Vicente’s body into an Adonis-like spectacle. Or the bloodred sweater that the adult version wears when reuniting with a long-lost love that symbolizes a moment of reawakening and reconnection with the outside world. Clearly taking the lessons he’s learned from Douglas Sirk, Almodóvar fashions yet another candy-coated melodrama that bushes the boundaries of narrative absurdity within an explosion of color and texture.

 

Yet you can’t keep a rascal down for too long as Almodóvar promptly reintroduces Salvador to the leading man of his first success, Alberto (Asier Etxeandia) and has the two men commiserating over their wounds before engaging in casual heroin use. The two of them falling down the junkie rabbit hole together provides some of the sharpest, wildest gags in some time. Alberto is also responsible for laying the groundwork for Salvador’s eventual creative flourish as he finds unused manuscripts and begs to fashion them into a one-man show.

 

It is through the prism of Alberto’s one-man show that we gather further autobiographical purges from Salvador/Almodóvar. And the long-lost love that will provide a one-night reunion that makes Moonlight’s climax seem demur by comparison for all its sustained emotional expressions. Throughout, I had been convinced that Antonio Banderas was giving the performance of his career, but this sequence absolutely sealed it.  

 

Banderas has a habit of appearing a bit hammy in his American films, not his fault but the fault of a system that doesn’t quite know what to do with him. His Spanish films, particularly his prior work with Almodóvar, is exemplary, and this could be the crown jewel of his career. Layered, minimalistic, achingly vulnerable and playfully stylish, Banderas crafts a portrait of a flame reigniting that’s as touching as he is improbably handsome.

 

Of course, Almodóvar always gets the best work out of his various muses, which Banderas absolutely should qualify as given the ways his camera has caressed and exemplified him over the years. The two of them have crafted a funny, beautiful, touching self-reflexive portrait that perhaps operates as a bit of wish fulfilment. (Whose mid-life crisis looks this glamorous?) The ending camera pull back to reveal Cruz being filmed in a scene by Banderas is another one of the director’s tricky climatic subversions that display that while he’s mellowed and matured with age, he’s still a provocateur at heart.  

I have been following Pedro Almodovar's career for more than 20 years so it was really neat to see his last directing effort with my film club. Well, it turned out to be his most autobiographical movie so far and you might wonder what really happened and what was made up. Still, even if it was not as over-the-top as some of his previous movies, it was still slightly too messy for my taste. Indeed, there was a mix of various storylines dealing with drug addiction, his career, his youth, his health issues, his relationship with his mother and with an actor with whom he had a feud for 3 decades. Some of them were really interesting and some of them, well, not so much. Eventually, there was enough material to make at least 3 different movies and I think it would have better worked for me if the whole thing would have been slightly more focused. Still, the Spanish master has a unique directing style, his very own narrative approach, and it made the whole thing quite spellbinding to behold. Finally, it is such a treat to see Antonio Banderas working again with Amodovar, after all these years in Hollywood, and he probably gave here his best performance so far. Anyway, to conclude, even if I wasn't completely sold by the damned thing, it was still a really solid effort from Amodovar and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in his work. 

Ay Pedro, para sus adentros pero transparente para afuera, la idea de la adicción y la soledad, en estructura de espejo, sin formalismo, sin artilugios, solo algunas licencias narrativas. El hombre viejo es eso, dolor y gloria.