Broken Embraces Review

Posted by Erik Luers on 11.24.2009

Almodovar regresa mejor que nunca.....

Penélope Cruz ... Lena
Lluís Homar ... Mateo Blanco / Harry Caine
Blanca Portillo ... Judit García
José Luis Gómez ... Ernesto Martel
Rubén Ochandiano ... Ray X
Tamar Novas ... Diego
Ángela Molina ... Madre de Lena (Lena's Mother)
Chus Lampreave ... Portera (Concierge)





"The second premise of the auteur theory is the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value. Over a group of films a director must exhibit certain recurring characteristics of style which serve as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels."

—From "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962" by Andrew Sarris

A self-congratulatory reflection of his own career, Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces sums up everything we loved about the director and pours itself out in the form of an intricate neo-noir. There are hundreds of movies the film pays humble homage to, and by influencing Almodovar, his films have influenced us. Although neither a full fledged comedy nor a deadly serious drama, Broken Embraces possesses a distinct feeling of yesteryear; a brooding trip into classical romanticism and melodrama. Set between the years 1992 and 2008, the film follows characters in trouble, some deserving, some undeserving, and we witness their lives intersect to become a not so cohesive whole. Complicated and character heavy in the most satisfying ways possible, Almodovar has crafted another sensitive film in love with its characters and what they have to say. For this we should be grateful. After two non-masterpieces in Bad Education and Volver (although both very good in their own right), Almodovar has returned with a vengeance and passion for complex genre storytelling. This is one of the year's best films.

The movie focuses on movie people, and for fans and long time Almodovar devotees, this should come as no surprise. Long interested in the secret, behind the scenes lives of movie directors (for obvious reasons), the Spanish auteur has crafted another film, at least in part, about a director's dangerous and shady past. If you love scenarios which involve a lot of cinematic jargon — and more importantly, people who love to talk in depth about the cinema (most of the characters in this world are chronic cinephiles) — then chances are you've been aboard the Almodovar train for a long time now. This new work focuses on an once famous director named Mateo (played by the great Lluís Homar), now blind due to a tragic accident, living under a pseudonym in Madrid. He remains active by listening to movies, taking meetings with desperate, young nonprofessionals, and bedding the loveliest women that will help him cross the street and take him upstairs to his apartment. It's one of the many perks of previously working strenuous hours on various film sets.

His producing partner (played by Blanca Portillo) looks after him in a motherly fashion, scheduling his life and helping him get through his lonely days. Her son also spends a lot of time with Mateo, and they have developed a relationship not unlike a father/son bond. One day, a mysterious young man asks to speak to Mateo about a future project, one which greatly frightens the blind director. At first we are unaware as to why, and thus, our noir starts off with a good mystery, one which is primarily told via flashbacks and voiceover narration.

Years earlier, a sexy actress named Lena (Penelope Cruz), in a relationship with a domineering and wealthy businessman, was hired to play the lead in Mateo's new movie. Since she was so darn irresistible, Mateo formed a sexual relationship with her behind the scenes, unaware that they were secretly being filmed by Lena's jealous lover's son. There will be dramatic repercussions for their days and nights of unrelenting fornication, and the film footage will provide their respective downfalls in more ways than one. Before you can say Peeping Tom, a character in the movie does it for you.

The plot continues forward, all the while twisting and turning and making you smile by how well everything is satisfyingly coming together. And while it is true that there will be casualties by the time Broken Embraces comes to a close, the film is a love story, a tragic and mysterious one, but a love story all the same. That the love takes on so many forms — lover to lover, forbidden lover to forbidden lover, mother to son, father to son — only speaks of the richness of Almodovar's screenplay. The best noirs feature strong characters (some not at all like they original appear) and red herrings (or in the case of John Huston, false falcons), and this film, having studied up on the classics accordingly, is less about the secret than the plot elements withholding it. The multi-layered characters are the details; Chinatown was as much about an abusive and dysfunctional family as it was about the corrupt legalities of agua.

I opened this review with a quote from Andrew Sarris' famous article, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962”, for a very specific reason. As I watched the film, I noticed familiar Almodovar narrative traits and references, and I wondered to myself if this was necessarily a good thing. As Pauline Kael said in her response to Sarris, repetition was a sign of decline, not advance. But in its own way, this film serves as an overview of Almodovar's past accomplishments, and it was made for people who have been following the man all along. This isn't repetitive as much as it is a variation of old themes. Let's look at a few examples.

You may recall that in Law of Desire (in my opinion, one of Almodovar's best works), a film director gets into a car crash and loses his memory. In Broken Embraces, a film director gets into a car crash and loses his eyesight. Now, beyond the obvious claims that filmmakers in Almodovar movies should never get into motor vehicles, Almodovar is using this wreckage to add on another level of tragedy and suspense. The director with (temporary) memory loss in Law of Desire is unable to report a murder, and Mateo in Embraces is unable to continue his career. Both men are repenting for their sins. In Law, he is repenting for lying and being unfaithful to his first lover, and in this new film Mateo also repents (albeit unwillingly), for committing adultery. The fact that their new physical conditions in turn make them more vulnerable and closed off from the rest of the world , cast out of society, only further proves my point. For more Catholic guilt via sinful adultery, see Live Flesh.

Another interesting aspect of the film is the inclusion of a story about the late, great, playwright, Arthur Miller and his much publicized love life. Unbeknownst to me — thanks to a little research, it apparently seems to be true — Miller had a son diagnosed with down syndrome with a lover after Marilyn Monroe, and he never spoke about the boy in public. Was he ashamed of him? Your guess is as good as mine.

While I am without all of the details, this factual story got me thinking. In Broken Embraces, a character has a teenage son whom may be gay, and he wishes that he could change that aspect of him. He asks his own lover if she could try to find out for sure, that is, without resorting to sleeping with him, and yes, the son does indeed turn out to be gay (he also enjoys spying on characters through peepholes a la the voyeuristic Norman Bates in Psycho). An even greater connection: there is another father/son relationship within the film which may surprise you. Perhaps the Miller connection stems from there, and if so, there is a playful irony at work. I'll let you decide. After praising Tennesse Williams in All About My Mother, it's nice to see Almodovar proclaiming his respect for yet another deceased dramatist.

The film, like all Almodar films, is filled with so many luscious and sensual colors that you may want to run home after the screening and take a shower and/or smoke a cigarette. Penelope Cruz's red (a key color) outfits are striking, as are the various wigs and other clothes she wears on the set of her movie within a movie. When she dons a Marilyn Monroe wig at one point, you'll think about Arthur Miler once more (that is, after you get over how and sexy and exotic she looks, and I still haven't). Her character is trapped in a relationship that she can't stand, and, in a great moment, she has sex immersed in a sea of white bedsheets because she can not bare the sight of her elderly sugar daddy; after sex, nude, she runs to the bathroom and throws up. She is a classic woman in peril, enslaved by the self-made producer of her own film.

A word, if I may, about Mateo's impending film. Its plot elements may seem oddly familiar to you, and you may notice some recognizable faces (I caught two cameos, but there may be more). There is a reason for this. Although I won't give away what the movie really is, it eventually becomes pretty clear, as if Almodovar is letting us in on a private joke. It also, quite appropriately, brings his career full circle while updating an old classic for a 2009 audience (take out terrorists and replace them with drug lords, for example). I won't say much more, except that the final five minutes are very pleasing due to a sort of nostalgic onscreen one movie retrospective. You'll see for yourselves. Mientra mas sabes, mejor.

If you couldn't already tell, I loved Broken Embraces, and maybe you will too. At the very least, you have to respect a film in which one of the main tragedies involves a film being edited together by using the worst takes imaginable. The dailies are not always our friends, and neither are the sneaky men who edit them. Listening to Almodovar's characters converse with one another, I was honestly overcome with great joy. With this film, the man has created another dangerous and immensely fulfilling time at the cinema, and that's all I ask for. At sixty years young, he is only getting better, and as respective moviegoers, how lucky we all are as a result.

The 411: Broken Embraces is another classic courtesy of Mr. Almodovar, and is without question, one of the best movies of 2009. There's something for everyone here. Get swept up in the story, and fall in love with how it's all set up and plays out, and notice the visual flourishes the director subtly employs. It's sexual, erotic, and raunchy in all the right ways. Sit back for a few hours and let Almodovar tell you a story about the dissection of movies, and I'm sure you'll walk out with a greater appreciation of his. "Viva Pedro" is right.

Final Score:  9.0   [  Amazing ]