Sensitive reflection by master film-maker
SPANISH director Pedro Almodóvar has had an illustrious and prolific career, having crafted more than 20 films.
Given that he was born and grew up during the fascist rule of General Franco, many of his early films dealt with sexual freedom and the permissiveness of the early honeymoon period, following the demise of the iron-fisted ruler.
He’s been referred to as the “gay godfather” of Spanish film and many of his movies have that singularly colourful, almost gaudy quality to them – indicative of the ‘80s in which they were made.
I’ve seen at least a dozen films of his, from Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown to Tie me Up! Tie
me Down! and The Flower of My Secret.
His latest, together with Law
of Desire (1987) and Bad Education
(2004), make up a trilogy about his life. And this is one of his best films, despite it’s often tortured material; but then that’s the nature of the beast.
Playing the notable film director, Antonio Banderas puts on a sterling performance as the faded, healthchallenged and drug-addicted Salvador, who swings back and forth from his memories of earlier years to the current, an often dire situation he feels he’s found himself in.
Banderas and Almodóvar are by no means lookalikes but Banderas sports a similar wild shock of salt and pepper hair to that of the director.
In the film, he suffers from a range of illnesses, some of which, as one wryly notes, are but a figment of his troubled imagination.
He’s racked by real pain and a sense of metaphysical ailment, retreating depressively into a more and more solitary life.
By chance, he meets a former colleague Alberto (beautifully played by Asier Etxeandia).
The pair became estranged when they made their last film because of Alberto’s addiction to drugs (which he still uses).
However, it seems the spotlight is put on Salvador as he starts using and becomes hooked.
There are some hilarious scenes as the new-found friends have some crazed drug-induced moments and their friendship is severely tested after a disastrous, drug-fuelled showing at a screening of one of their old movies.
The flashbacks include some beautifully poignant scenes which in Almodóvar’s hands become filmic moments to treasure. Penelope Cruz puts on a superb performance as the young version of his mother Jacinta, when the family in the early days live in a cave-like rural home.
There’s an exquisite scene of how Salvador’s desire is ignited as a boy when the handyman he teaches to read and write strips down to wash.
The young Salvador (finely portrayed by Asier Flores) lies on a bed; from where he watches out of the corner of his eye as the beautiful man slowly and sensually pours buckets of water over his finely formed body.
Neither overly sentimental nor erotic, it’s just the delicately evoked sense of a boy’s coming of age.
Julieta Serrano plays the older Jacinta... with many bittersweet exchanges between son and mother.
Mention must also be made of the musical score by Alberto Iglesias that matches the moods of this wonderfully structured film.
In the media release, Banderas is quoted as saying about this sensitive, contemplative reflection by a master film-maker: “Are we only the things that we have done and that we have said? Or are we also the things that we have never said? The things we wanted to do and never did? In this case, Pedro Almodóvar’s movie is more Almodóvar than Almodóvar. In a way, he completed certain areas from that passage of his life by making this film.”