Review of Broken Embraces (2009) by Bartek F — 14 Feb 2010

I'm ashamed to say that this is only my second Pedro Almodovar experience. I've read so much about the Mexican virtuoso and how he is considered one of the great modern directors, yet for various reasons I have never really endeavoured to see his films. I stumbled upon Volver on DVD and unenthusiastically gave it a go. It was good. Nothing more, nothing less. How could this be the same bloke that famous critics and reviewers across the world rave about? Needless to say this did nothing to shake my reluctance to seek out his earlier movies. Then I saw Broken Embraces.

The blind man, the once-famed director of motion pictures, doesn't like to be called Mateo Blanco anymore. It's a name he associates with his seeing years, when the blind man made movies, made love to the woman he worshiped, and made enemies. Now he calls himself Harry Caine, a man who learns that his vision was taken away from him in more ways than one. More than a physical blindness, Harry was not only blind-sided by a speeding vehicle on the highway, which killed Lena, the star of "Girls and Suitcases", and left him sightless, he was also blind-sided by Judit, who afflicted her one-time lover with a professional blindness, when she butchered "Girls and Suitcases" in the editing room, out of jealousy over the filmmaker's romancing of his leading lady. Prior to his handicap, Mateo had thought he lost his creative vision. "Los abrazos rotos", in a sense, recalls Woody Allen's "Hollywood Ending", where the big joke was that filmmakers had no vision, as the filmmaker, played by Allen himself, directed a movie without the benefit of sight. In "Los abrazos rotos", Pedro Almodovar, through his evocation of screen legend Audrey Hepburn, perhaps, wants to say something about Hollywood, in which filmmakers lose their vision when the right to final cut is taken away from them. Ultimately, the melodramatic story, that of a rich tycoon who is jealous of his wife's affair with another man, frames the real subject, which is, ultimately, the relationship between art and commerce on any given film.

Almodovar's meticulously crafted picture is a riveting, lust-filled drama that shows obvious signs of his love for cinema. He passionately embraces the melodramatic template and gives it so much beautiful detail that you sit with baited breath to find out how each tension-filled segment will end. Often in these types of movies the characters can be one dimensional, but not in Almodovar's world. Here each person, even the unpleasant ones, are injected with such life you become genuinely interested to see where their choices will take them. At times his artistic flourishes can be somewhat pretentious, sure, however when you attempt to give each and every scene a rich, emotional atmosphere small faults like this will occasionally creep in. It is credit to his fascinating screenplay and Rodrigo Prieto's iridescent cinematography that more of these 'arty-farty' moments don't become apparent.

That and, so it goes, having his nebbish would-be-Peeping-Tom-with-a-camera son follow Mateo and Lena around behind the scenes to tape every move - which is, of course, an intense affair blooming between star and director. It's this tale of intrigue and romance, of this controlling old man and his own 'belonging' really, not to mention the whole romance-gone hot and (never-was) romance gone sour that gives the filmmaker his thematic backbone. But what separates this from tawdry is Almodovar's perspective, his dedication to stay totally truthful with his characters, even if they can be lying or obsessive or stupid or just out of the loop. It dances with absurdity, but never goes over (the film-in-the-film scenes, "Girls in Suitcases", is an exception).

Another thing that Broken Embraces has going for it is Almodovar's breathless adoration for technique. This is why, perhaps as obvious as Bad Education, the mood is very Hitchcockian. It's never too direct a way ala De Palma, but it is there in the torment and obsession of that old man controlling Lena (Vertigo much?) and in the nature of duality. The music, by the way, is Bernard Herrmann squared. And yet Almodovar brings up questions out of his technique: How can a director direct, one should add, if he's blind? Power, in love and film-making, is a great component here. This goes without saying as well the splendid color palette, the way a character will just come through a curtain, and of course the beautiful cinematography.

Least not forget Penelope Cruz. She's not alone in delivering good work here (kudos must go to Portillo as Judit and Gomez as the controlling Martel), but somehow, as with Volver, she rises the material up a whole notch. She must be such a great muse for the director as a star as much as an actress, evident playfully when Mateo has Lena trying on different wigs and posing like Audrey Hepburn or Kim Novak. There's a lot that Cruz can do with Lena and she makes all the wise choices as she makes her one of Almodovar's most vulnerable but strong-minded and loving women in his films.

Broken Embraces is about, as they say, love lost and a haunted past, and every moment is believable even as we might question what is really going on or being revealed. Almodovar revels in making his films intimate, urgent and amusing in their flights of dramatic fancy. And, to cap it off, he indulges in self parody; Girls and Suitcases could have easily been one of his crazy sex comedies from the 1980's. Which is just fine, as one recalls, Hitchcock was wont to mock himself in later years, hilariously and lovingly always.

Three and a half stars out of four.