Review of Pain and Glory (2019) by Mauro_Lanari — 05 Oct 2019

(Mauro Lanari).

In the category of self-referential, self-analytical and autobiographical art, I consider more interesting the comparison with other authors than those I found mentioned in the reviews at "Dolor y gloria". I didn't perceive it as an accomplished film, I didn't get the impression that Almodóvar wanted or knew how to transfigure his very personal material. The beginning with the chapters "geography" and above all "anatomy", an animated list of the various ailments of health, promised a form of Trierian reworking, powerfully ingenious, sarcastic to the limit of autoparody, but they are not color tones that belong to Pedro's palette. Another notorious director for the tormented quest to extend his own navel to the human condition is Moretti, and his best film is that "Caro diario" (1993) in which he has bound himself to a classical structure like the Wolffian one (the same present also in "Antichrist", 2009). Here instead we are close to a stream of consciousness, liberating and cathartic more for those who express it than for those who receive it. In other words, I have some difficulty in identifying myself with this type of report of an eccentrically trivial life, too subjective and too little objective.