Pain and Glory

First Hit: At times, this story of a filmmaker in decline was engaging.

At times I could begin to feel the pain of Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) as he slowly moved about the confines of his home. Other times I didn’t sense the embodiment of pain at all. It felt inconsistent.

The film begins when Mallo has just been asked to talk to a group about a presentation of his movie “Sabor.” It is a 30-year retrospective presentation of this film for which he’d become famous and had received praise and recognition. We learn that he disliked the way the lead actor in that film, Alberto Crespo (Asier Etxeandia), made the main character. But having just seen it again after all this time, he ended up liking what Crespo did with the role.

Wanting Crespo to join him on the stage for the a Q&A about the film, Mallo reaches out to Crespo and asks to meet up with him. There were awkward moments at this first meeting in thirty years, but they become soothed when Crespo introduces Mallo to heroin. The drug eases his physical and inner pain along with his angst towards Crespo.

During Malo’s sleep and when he’s drugged up, the film flashes back to these moments when he was a boy, and we begin to learn something about this creative man and where his creativity comes from.

We see an early scene where Salvador is a young boy (Asier Flores), and he’s with his mother Jacinta (Penelope Cruz) in a train station after having left their home. They are waiting for Salvador’s father (Raul Arevalo) to come take them to their new home. They are tired, and he lies on the bench to sleep, while she lies on the floor. This is a sharp image early on in the film and is used again at the end.

The flashbacks include when his mother is much older (played by Julieta Serrano) and Salvador’s attempt to care for her. She uses guilt to have him attend to her as she wishes.

The story also explores his first love Federico Delgado (Leonardo Sbaraglia). Salvador gives Crespo a one-person play he’s written (Addiction), and when Federico happens to see it, he locates and calls Salvador. Their reunion is incredibly sweet.

There is also a flashback of Salvador teaching an adult young man, Eduardo (Cesar Vicente), how to read and write. These are beautifully choreographed scenes, especially when you see Salvador sitting with Eduardo, tasking him to work on his writing. 

 I’m not sure I understood Salvador’s relationship with Mercedes (Nora Navas) other than she was an actress looking for work and genuinely cared for Salvador. 

Many of the shots and scenes are beautifully presented, and then pull away at the end was clever and poignant. 

Banderas was good. I didn’t think he expressed his pain very well because there are scenes where he moves with a particular gait and then delivers a different opposing stride in another scene. I also wanted to better understand why he had this pain, both physical and mental. Etxeandia was excellent as the drug-addled actor. In his scenes where he’s performing the play “Addiction,” he was excellent. It was very moving. Sbaraglia was very strong as Salvador’s old friend and flame. Cruz was excellent as Salvador’s younger mother. Vicente’s performance as the young man whom Salvador teaches was excellent. Flores as young Salvador was terrific. He rebelled against going to school at a church because he hated the thought of being a priest. Pedro Almodovar wrote and directed this film. While watching this film, I kept thinking about how close this film is to being a biography. 

Overall: The next day, I wasn’t very impressed or impacted by this film.

Julieta

First Hit:  With superb casting, this was a well-crafted story of life, loss and love.

Pedro Almodovar writes and directs thoughtful films and this one is another wonderful offering. Almodovar shoots this film by going back and forth between Julieta’s younger life and older life.

Here we have a young woman Julieta (Adriana Ugarte plays a young Julieta and Emma Suarez as the older Julieta) who is married to Xoan (Daniel Grao) and together they have a young girl named Antia (Priscilla Delgado – adolescent). Antia is close with her father and fishes with him often. As a young mother, Julieta is slightly distant and provides most of the structure in their household. During one summer Antia goes to camp and while away, tragedy strikes.

After this tragedy, Julieta’s distant malaise and distance grows and she is falling apart. Antia and her close friend Beatriz (Sara Jimenez – adolescent and Michelle Jenner as an adult Beatriz) take care of Julieta. However, after Antia turns 18 (Blanca Pares – young adult) she leaves for a retreat and never returns or is heard from again.

Julieta is lost. She lost her husband and now her daughter. Her guilt is that she caused her husband’s death because of a disagreement, and with her daughter disappearing she is hopeless.

This film tracks Julieta’s sadness and slow discovery of how she needs to change her life to get it back. The scenes that show the depth of her despair were Antia’s birthdays that Julieta celebrated alone by making a cake, lighting the candles and then throwing the cake away. This film is about loss, communication, love, and the possibility of resolution.

The choice of actors for both the young and older Julieta was amazing because there was no change in the spiritual energy or depth of character in either of these actors.

Ugarte and Suarez were amazingly sublime in their role as Julieta both young and old. The ease in which I (the audience) moved from one to the other is a testimony to their acting greatness and the casting director. Grao in his small role was wonderful. Delgado as young Antia was very good. She carried a beautiful strength when caring for her mother. Pares was strong as the older Antia and did a nice job of moving the character into adulthood. Jimenez was great as Antia’s close childhood friend Beatriz. Jenner was very good as the older Beatriz. Dario Grandinetti was very strong as Lorenzo, Julieta’s lover and friend as an adult. Almodovar did a wonderful job of crafting and telling this story as writer and director.

Overall:  This was a very strong film by Almodovar.

The Skin I Live In

First Hit:  Odd and interesting film about obsession, retaliation and redemption.

Almodovar does some interesting films, some are oddly funny while other films are unique in their view of life and behavior.

Here Robert Ledgard (played by Antonio Banderas) is a surgeon who performs magic on burn patients. Additionally he performs sex change operations out of his own operating room in his home. His wife dies from suicide because she is horribly burned and when she sees her reflection in a window for the first time, she cannot stand what she sees.

His daughter gets raped by a young man named Vincente (played by Jan Cornet) and because she is traumatized, commits suicide as well. Legard, as part of his research, is working on how to replace and grow skin as a replacement for burn victims.

In his anger at losing his daughter, he kidnaps Vincente the boy who raped his daughter and changes him into a woman named Vera Cruz (played by Elena Anaya). Because she is with him for years they develop a relationship.

However, this film is about revenge and redemption so it has its twists. The one thing that amazed me was how perfect Vera’s skin was. I know that this must have been the expert use of makeup as well as special effects.

The skin was amazing.

Banderas is very good as the somewhat mental, yet intelligent doctor. Cornet was well cast as the troubled rogue young man. Anaya was superb as Vera. Pedro Almodovar wrote and directed this interesting and thoughtful film.

Overall: A good film and worth watching.