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.