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Broken Embraces (2009)

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

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6 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Click here to read an interview with Cruz

There’s often something charmingly eccentric about the English titles of Pedro Almodóvar’s films, as if Spain’s greatest living director spent just a few minutes pondering their translation with the aid of an online Spanish-English dictionary. ‘Live Flesh’? What exactly is that? ‘Bad Education’? The Spanish means ‘Bad Manners’ or ‘Ill Bred’. And now ‘Broken Embraces’. I’m not sure what they are either, although having seen Almodóvar’s seventeenth film twice, what’s clear is that the name reflects the feeling of watching it: it pulls you in and repels you, pulls you in and repels you. After over two hours of flirtation and rejection (this is Almodóvar’s longest film), it finally resolves itself into a beautiful love letter to cinema and its glorious potential, but not without exploring the darker side of the medium and how a film can so easily slip through its maker’s fingers.

While some of Almodóvar’s films are out-and-out heartbreakers – perfect storms of melodrama, storytelling and extreme living – this is a more cerebral, self-reflective and noir-ish affair. It’s part of his brilliance to tell wild stories without you even batting an eyelid. But here you can’t help notice the film’s complexity, not least because this tragic romantic thriller is mostly about films and filmmaking: Almodóvar is intent on piling image upon image so that there are several films within a film, including an amusing pastiche of the director’s own ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’, here renamed ‘Girls and Suitcases’.

We start in the present: Harry Caine (Lluís Homar) is a blind scriptwriter who doesn’t let his disability disarm him: we encounter him having fun on his sofa with a woman who helped him to cross the road. But his past rears its head when a young man comes knocking and we flash back to 1992 to meet Lena (Penélope Cruz), a young secretary driven to desperate measures to help her ill father. Two years later, Lena is living with her violent, older millionaire boss Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) and starring in a film funded by Martel and directed by Caine – not yet blind and using his real name, Mateo Blanco.

To explain more is unnecessary, but Almodóvar explores themes of spying and control, each of which he reflects through cinema itself: Martel follows his wife via snatched video recordings; Blanco fights for the ownership of his work as much as he struggles to keep a grip on his life; and Lena seeks personal and professional escape through acting.

Cruz is as enchanting as ever and channels images of actresses from Monroe to Audrey Hepburn through her various masks of hair, clothes and make-up. The photography may be more restrained in colour than anything Almodóvar has produced but this suits the film’s stately, reflective air. Be warned though: you have to be prepared to think more than you feel, and to think more about cinema even than life itself. But what brilliant thoughts…

Click here to read an interview with Cruz

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 2036, 26 August – 1 September

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User reviews of this film

Robert Thornton said...

Posted on Dec 22 2010 08:29 Another Almodarvar film which is complex, funny, entertaining, off the wall and sexy but after watching the film and retaining the visuals there is nothing really to discus.

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donna said...

Posted on Feb 09 2010 10:57 At once simple and complex, the film was like being in a slow-motion whirlwind. Loads going on, but at a pace at which you could savour every glorious, artistically-saturated moment. Although I have enjoyed his previous work, I never considered myself a fan - until now. A masterful masterpiece of a film.

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rednose said...

Posted on Oct 03 2009 13:28 good film thats all...

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Paquita said...

Posted on Sep 08 2009 10:47 Usual Almodovar hysterical tense drama.... at times getting frankly tedious ....i think he is much better doing comedies "women on the verge of a nervous breakdown". and "what have i done to deserve this" were his best films and that was a very long time ago...Also I can fully understand that some people can find Cruz beautiful but is that a reason to consider her such a good actress? what with that perpetual startled look of her?

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fb said...

Posted on Sep 01 2009 16:54 Saw this yest @ Wood Green Cineworld. I'm not a fan of Almodovar (too obsessed with kitsch and gay men's Oedipal complexes) but was v pleasantly surprised. BE felt more like a French noir than anything else and was all the better for it. Most impressed by Almodovar's restraint - there were points where he could've daubed the film with a welter of flourishes (suspect he was dying to!) but held back and let the audience take everything in: perhaps BE is a part-repudiation of his earlier works (the right royal send-up in the 'Girls And Suitcases' scene was sublime)? I felt the character of Ray X, the tycoon's embittered son, was quite underdone (never seemed sure whether he was meant to be creepy or just sad) but the other perfs were good, especially Blanca Portillo as Judit (she's one of those actresses who'd be eminently watchable in anything). Also glad BE didn't turn into one long celluloid wet dream over Cruz's undoubted beauty. All in all, a lovely experience and whatever Almodovar has in store for us next, I hope he continues in this vein rather than the tired, hysterical, overrated offerings of yore.

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Paul said...

Posted on Aug 28 2009 21:00 After a summer of some appalling big budget films, it is a delight to have a film with does not need big budget effects, sound effects or 3D glasses. The audinece were spellbound not just by Cruz of course but a long and entrancing storyline that cuts back and forwards in time. I fancy seeing the film again to enjoy the film and to ignore the sub-titles because there is so much to enjoy. Fantastic, roll on autumn for more great films.

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