Broken Embraces (Los Abrazos Rotos)

[modage]

Spanish Language Trailer:

Pedro Almodovar's ("Volver") highly anticipated film, "Broken Embraces," has released a full-length trailer. The film stars Penelope Cruz in her native tongue of Spanish, a language which always makes for a superior performance from the actress. The trailer is completely in Spanish, so congratulations to those Spanish-speaking readers, but you still get the gist of it.

[MacGuffin]

Spain's Almodovar honors cinema itself in new film
Source: AP

MADRID - Spanish director Pedro Almodovar unveiled a new film rich in the staples of a career that has earned him two Oscars : romance, sex, drama and lots of humor. But this time he's added a nod to his passion for moviemaking itself.

" Los Abrazos Rotos ," or Broken Embraces, is about a writer and director telling the story of an accident that left him blind 14 years earlier and a torrid relationship with an actress with whom he was filming.

That character — played by recent Oscar-winner Penelope Cruz — becomes the center of a love triangle involving the director and a rich businessman, who is equally obsessed with her.

With hints of thriller-style cinema thrown in, Almodovar's film alludes to his own earlier movies those of directors he admires, such as Roberto Rossellini .

"It is a romantic movie, with intertwined stories of love. But underlying them all is my love for cinema," Almodovar said Friday after a press screening.

The movie opens next week in Spain . No date has been set for its release overseas.

"It is a profession of love for cinema," Almodovar told a packed news conference at which he was flanked by Cruz and other cast members.

For Cruz it was her first public appearance in her native Spain since she won an Oscar last month for best supporting actress for her portrayal of an artist's erratic ex-wife in the Woody Allen movie " Vicky Cristina Barcelona ."

Cruz, who lives in California, said "the Oscar has come with me to Spain, and I am going to leave it here. For now, I have no idea what this award is going to mean for me."

Almodovar tried to help her get an idea. In 2000, he won the Oscar for best foreign film for " All About My Mother ," and he earned Hollywood's best-original-screenplay honor in 2003 for " Talk to Her ."

He said: "The Oscar is the only prize that is treated like a living thing. People and friends call you to come over and meet it."

[MacGuffin]

Almodovar directs Cruz again in homage to cinema

The picture, Almodovar's fourth collaboration with Cruz, which is in competition at the Cannes film festival, recalls "films noirs," classic comedies and screen sirens of the past.

It includes a scene from Roberto Rossellini's "Viaggio in Italia" starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, and the film-within-a-film revisits Almodovar's 1988 hit "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

"I fully believe that cinema can make life more perfect," the Oscar winner told reporters on Tuesday, after Broken Embraces was warmly applauded at a press screening.

Cruz plays Lena, a secretary who ends up in a relationship with her wealthy boss Ernesto. Also an aspiring actress, she is spotted by the charismatic director Mateo Blanco with whom she quickly falls in love.

When Mateo loses his sight in a car accident, he adopts his pseudonym Harry Caine and reinvents himself completely in order to avoid the painful memories of the past.

Almodovar likened his character's experience to that of his home country, saying Spain rightly buried its past after the end of fascism in the 1970s.

"At that time it was necessary to forget the past. Spain has been a democratic country for over 30 years now ... Things have changed a great deal. The time has come to recover these memories from the past. It is even indispensable to do so."

ACTING CHALLENGE

Cruz said playing Lena as well as Lena's character in the film-within-a-film was a test of her acting skills.

"The film in the film wasn't easier, I'd say quite the opposite, it was even more difficult," said the 35-year-old, who has been battling a bout of 'flu in Cannes.

"Playing the same scene several times, once well and being a good actress and then playing it badly, is extremely subtle, very tricky," added the star, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." "Sometimes on the same day I had to go from one character to another ... so it was all a little bit confused."

Asked to compare working with Almodovar and Allen, she said:

"They could not be more different ... With Pedro we always rehearse for a long time before. Woody doesn't like to rehearse. He really likes everybody to improvise. It's really a very, very different way of approaching things."

Almodovar is best known for strong female roles, and he again paid tribute to the women who raised him. But the director, a favorite in Cannes who has yet to win the Palme d'Or, said men would have more prominence from now on.

"So far my male characters intimidated me somewhat because for a male character I had to take myself as a reference, but now I feel less and less intimidated and so you are going to find more and more male characters in my films."

Almodovar said he did not expect to win Cannes this year.

"I am going to be leaving Cannes on Friday so I don't get the impression that I am waiting for an award," he said, before adding: "But I am quite prepared to come back on Sunday even if it's to get an award for the best actor or the best director."

Also featuring in Cannes on Tuesday was Italian competition entry "Vincere," directed by Marco Bellocchio. The film, based on the true story of a mistress cast aside by Benito Mussolini, offers a different perspective on the Italian fascist leader.

[Stefen]

This film just reaffirms what everyone already knew. Almodovar is a master storyteller who always has interesting characters.

While it may not be a home run, it's an easy double and shows why nobody can touch Almodovar when it comes to creating convincing characters with intriguing back stories.

Penelope Cruz, while being one of the most beautiful women working today, shows that she's also one of the best actresses working today. She kills it here. Almodovar's casting always seems to be spot on. It makes me wonder if he writes with certain actors in mind or just has a really great casting director.

8.5.

[Stefen]

Hey, Mod, I hear you saw this at NYFF? What did you think?

[modage]

Over the past few years I've come to appreciate Pedro Almodóvar.  It helps to date someone who is obsessed with him, but it also helps to grow a little older and revisit his films from a different perspective.  I can remember hearing about Talk To Her everywhere for about 6 months when it was released.  When I finally saw the film on DVD I couldn't understand what the fuss had been about.  I rented All About My Mother and felt like I was missing something.  I liked both films but didn't understand why a cult had formed around either.

I saw a pre-release screening of Bad Education and had a violent reaction against it, so it wasn't until I was won over by the charms of Volver that I began to appreciate him.  I could now appreciate Live Flesh or Women On The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown because something had clicked.  (Embarrassing to admit, I had a similar reaction to David Lynch having completely opposite reactions to his work before and after watching Twin Peaks.)  While I'm not sure that his films will ever be my favorite, I can understand his appeal. His style is unmistakable, vibrant characters, genre-blurring plotlines, always tweaking and refining his obsessions.

'Broken Embraces' is about a blind screenwriter, a millionaire and their obsessions, in the center of which is Penelope Cruz as Lena, an aspiring actress.  The film, which jumps between present day and the early 1990's, is unmistakably Almodóvar and even directly references Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.  Many familiar actors are present through a twisty narrative that has dashes of humor, questions of identity and scenes so gorgeous looking you will want to eat the film.  A montage to Cat Power's Werewolf is beautiful, unexpected highlight.

One of the films weak spots, unfortunately is it's characters.  Penelope Cruz is fantastic in the film but her character isn't given enough to do.  She's the object of desire instead of a character who we journey through the film with.  The blind director (perhaps by design) doesn't build much sympathy either.  The biggest misstep in the film, however is the final act where characters do too much confessional secret spilling that is more predictable than it should be and wraps things up too neatly.  Almodóvar said before he introduced the film that it plays better on the second viewing so I'll have to trust him on that.  I think he's earned it.

[MacGuffin]

Pedro Almodovar's 'Broken Embraces' gets personal
The Spanish director's latest movie, starring Penelope Cruz, touches on his own wish for a family.
By Rebecca Ascher-Walsh; Los Angeles Times

Reporting from New York City - On a recent rainy day in Manhattan, Pedro Almodóvar's tousled gray hair, generally studiously gravity-defying, looks less a result of styling than the repetitive raking of his hands. The 60-year-old Spanish writer-director, jet-lagged from his flight from Madrid, has been on a jag -- consulting on a Broadway-bound musical adaptation of his 1988 dramedy "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," as well as talking about his new film, "Broken Embraces," arguably his most personal and personally exposing work.

Starring Penélope Cruz in their fourth collaboration together, "Embraces," which opened in theaters Friday, is a mille-feuille of stories. One layer features Lluís Homar, who was in Almodóvar's 2004 film "Bad Education," playing a former director turned writer haunted by his last film, the production of which led to his blinding and further tragedy. He is approached by a mysterious director named Ray X (Rubén Ochandiano), who asks Homar's character to write a script for him. Much more happens, too much, in fact, to encapsulate simply. But ultimately, "Embraces" is an homage to filmmaking, love and the definition of family.

Says Cruz, who plays a wealthy man's mistress who becomes an actress, in a separate interview: "I think it is his most courageous film."

"I think all my films represent me, but in some way there is something quite intimate in this one," says Almodóvar, who is dressed conservatively in a gray cashmere sweater and slacks and is halfheartedly relying on a translator as he switches between English and Spanish. "It is about the passing of time in my life, and the ending of the film condenses everything I could wish for, which is a family.

"It is a little embarrassing to talk about but definitely present," he continues. "Of course, the people that I work with have become that, but there is a part of me that longs for a blood-related family. Perhaps that is madness, but nevertheless, the longing is there."

The appeal of Almodóvar, who gained international fame with films such as 1999's "All About My Mother," which won an Oscar for best foreign-language film, relies on his artful merging of yearning and madness. A transvestite has an affair with a nun ("Mother"); a mental patient longs to marry a porn star (1990's "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!"); relatives thought long-dead resurface (2006's "Volver"); throughout, lovers cross and double-cross each other.

As Cruz says, "He looks at people without prejudice, and he really sees them. Then he makes poetry out of that reality." Adds Almodóvar, "What is interesting to me is creating an empathy with the characters. Someone in [2002's] 'Talk to Her' is a psychopath, but I wanted to explain his humanity. You have to feel compassion for them."

Almodóvar doesn't bother with vague metaphors when it comes to the central character in "Embraces," a filmmaker who finds his career at a standstill due to the loss of his sight. It is, Almodóvar concurs, a fate he dreads even imagining. "I saw an image of John Huston shooting his last film," he says, "and he would arrive on the set in a wheelchair, connected to all these kinds of tubes, but it didn't feel pathetic to me at all. On the contrary, it felt very inspiring. I want to keep shooting even if I've lost my faculties."

There are many actors who can thank the director for his passion, among them Antonio Banderas, who starred in films such as "Tie Me Up!" and "Women on the Verge" before becoming an international star, and the director's next muse, Cruz, who has followed suit.

"This is a plus, because I don't have the money to work with a big Hollywood star, but now I can have a Hollywood star in my movie!" Almodóvar says with a smile. "But this is a kind of a miracle, not a regular thing."

Still, Almodóvar isn't interested in working within the studio system. The $10-million "Embraces" is his biggest budget film yet, and he insists he has no desire to spend more.

"You have real responsibility with people's money and investments," he says. "I remember going to lunch one day in the '90s with Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader. In Spain, we don't have money, we have a small market, and sometimes you have to invent actors since the industry has so few. But compared to a great director like Martin, who is supposed to be working in such better conditions, I felt so much more privileged," he says. "As I listened to their struggles making a movie and writing, I thought, 'My God, they have so many problems I don't.' I work with complete freedom and independence, and this is a real luxury."

Not to mention, of course, that certain extra perk: "Ah yes," he adds with a laugh, "and I can also call Penélope Cruz."

[Reinhold]

i saw broken embraces about two weeks ago and found it to be a lot less engaging than bad education or talk to her. on the whole, it's visually light and beautiful like all of his work, but this one is just so literal.

I found myself really reaching for some deeper meaning in this film, and i didn't really give a shit about any one of the characters, despite good performance from cruz and the financier... but the director was boring and the documentary producer seemed like a telenovela character thrown into a film. It's the first of his films that i've walked out of feeling really let down by a lack of story-- this film just felt like Almodovar going through the motions on a thin script.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

the documentary producer seemed like a telenovela character thrown into a film.

To be honest, the whole movie felt like a telenovela, but I liked that about it.  I haven't seen a lot of Almodovar's work outside of this (only Talk To Her) so maybe it was just a really nice introduction to his material because I thoroughly enjoyed this.

And Penelope Cruz.

[Stefen]

Pedro Almodovar is like sex.........

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

Except I'm having it!

[ElPandaRoyal]

I saw this a few months ago and I think it really is his weakest work, and the telenovela comparisons seem quite right, and not in a good way, either. There are great moments, some visually very pretty, and Cruz gives a fine performance, but all in all, this felt so lacking.

I remember hearing about a couple of projects Almodovar was involved in, one called Tarantula with Antonio Banderas, and another one in which Cruz was supposed to star as a woman victim of some sort of plastic surgery gone wrong, both supposed thrillers, and I really want them to become real movies.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

the telenovela comparisons seem quite right, and not in a good way, either.

If only it was more like you wanted it to be...

[MacGuffin]

With the consensus here. Not his best, but still full of interesting parts, they just the didn't add up to a whole. As the film started off and progressed, I kept wanting the story to kick in. And once it does, Almodovar toes a strange line of tone. From the score, to how the characters acted, all fought for a tone that was very soap opera-y, mystery and suspense and comedic. And the ending resolve scenes felt like a rehash of all that we already knew about the characters and story. I think if it had dropped the flashback aspect, and played it all out as present time, it would have rounded out the characters better.

[pete]

I don't think I got it.  it's just not a very good story.  the revelation that occurs after the third act - after flashback comes back to present, doesn't really count as storytelling, as the script manages to present what I've already assumed about the characters as "twists."
I don't get it, it can't be this sloppy can it?
but everything with penelope was incendiary.