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In some fashionable Spanish circles, Pedro Almodóvar has become a new whipping boy. Their former enfant terrible has, it is claimed, been making the same film for the past ten years and this is one of his grandest retreads. Yet in front of many a character assassin lies a misunderstood target and so it is with Broken Embraces. Certainly there's an air of the familiar (an anxious film director, a sleazy gay troublemaker, the google eyes of Chus Lampreave) yet it is also an intriguing, often beguiling foray into a kind of film noir matched with the director's passionate zeal for traumatic relationships.
Penélope Cruz is the film's heart, a glittering jewel of an actress whose jealous sugar-daddy Ernesto is discomforted by her relationship with Mateo, a successful filmmaker. He has reasonable cause, and sends his toadying son to spy on the couple under the guise of being a documentary maker. So drops the first layer of double-identity for not only is the boy not what he appears, Mateo adopts a new guise after being blinded by tragedy (metaphorically and literally). Almodovar jumps back and forth in time as Mateo, now Harry Caine, attempts to set the past straight.
Binding its complex structure and noir elements is a meditation on desire – romantic, sexual, a lust for power and then a little something for the cinephile. It's a feat only one as steeped in the cinematic arts as Almodóvar could pull off so successfully. Stylistically, Broken Embraces is still an Almodóvar film, undoubtedly, but much of the campy-crazy style that defined his early work is left far behind as he cements his new course. This may not be his best work, but with moments of dazzling brilliance it's certain he's assuming his rightful place alongside those European masters to whom he pays homage.
// COLIN FRASER
moviereview colin fraser film movie australia review critic flicks