Pain and Glory: An Almodovar Autobiography on Screen

 

Pain and Glory (2019)

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Sony Pictures Classics, 113 minutes, R (sexuality, drug use)

In Spanish with subtitles

★★★

 

There are many more good biographies than autobiographies. That’s because individuals are often not the best judges of their own lives. This is magnified on screen, where time constraints limit how even skilled filmmakers can explain themselves. Pain and Glory is Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s thinly veiled autobiography. It won two awards at Cannes and several publications–including Time Magazine–hailed it the best film of 2019. In my estimation, it’s more middle of the pack than top of the heap.

 

We come in upon Almodóvar’s avatar, Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), an aging director whose signature film Sabor (“Flavor’) has been dusted off after 32 years for a showing at a film festival. A longtime friend (Cecilia Roth) has asked him to appear at a post-screening Q & A along with the film’s lead actor: Alberto Crespo (Asier Etxeandia). That’s a problem, as they had a major falling out over Alberto’s heroin addiction and haven’t spoken since the film’s release. To further complicate things, Salvador’s identity is so tied into making movies that he can’t cope now that excruciating backpain and a complete lack of ideas have shelved him. Nonetheless, he seeks out Alberto and makes odd amends by beginning to smoke heroin himself. We also learn that Salvador is gay, but has been celibate for a long time. 

 

There’s nothing like nostalgia, discontent, and the Big-H to induce flashback memories. The film’s title is ironic in that it reverses the usual scraping bottom-to-redemption formula. Salvador’s “glory”–that is to say, 71-year-old Almodóvar’s–lies in the past. We go back in time to meet Salvador as a sunny, precocious child growing up poor in Paterna (Spain’s Valencia Province). His father keeps losing jobs, but his doting mother Jacinta (Penélope Cruz) does her best to maintain dignity–even when the family moves into a cave. (This is a thing in parts of southern Europe and isn’t quite as bad as it sounds.) We get hints of young Salvador’s sexual stirrings and love of film before we are thrown into Madrid in the 1980s, a time in which Salvador’s identities crystallize.

 

The film’s narrative is non-linear, though most of it focuses on the present. Think of it as a disassembled book in which beginning, middle, and end are snipped apart and partially reassembled in an order that’s neither entirely random nor entirely logical. We hear of a serious former lover, Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), who exists only in name before showing up in Madrid for a quick visit after decades living in Argentina. He is now married with children, yet still comes on to Salvador. Since we know little of their previous time together other than a few jovial tales over glasses of wine, the “now” doesn’t cohere. There is another tale involving a drawing done by a peasant lad whom young Salvador once taught to read that is abruptly dropped and just as abruptly resurrected. The same is true for Jacinta, whom we meet as young and vital, but not again until she is elderly.

 

The charitable thing would be to say that memories are like that; they form, get shoved aside, and reappear when we least expect or desire them to do so. Another way to look at it, though, would be to compare Almodóvar’s filmmaking to looking at a photo album in which the images are inserted out of chronological or contextual order. As often happens in autobiographies, authors/auteurs forget that their memories may not make sense to those whose who haven’t lived those experiences. It should also be said that, though Almodóvar has never hidden his sexual preferences, screening them no longer packs cinematic wallop. No one watching an Almodóvar film is shocked or cares any more. If you know his oeuvre, you also know that he has often explored–either overtly or via a surrogate–his relationship with his mother. This suggests that Mallo’s director’s block is an admission of Almodóvar’s own conceptual staleness.

 

Why bother watching? First, there is Antonio Banderas as you’ve never before seen him. He won best actor honors at Cannes, a prize he richly deserved for a note-perfect portrayal of a man on the verge of an ennui breakdown. Why does he do heroin but pass up a sexual conquest? Why does he take no pleasure in his amazing home filled with art and wonders? As Mallo, he couldn’t explain, but it takes serious acting chops to make us care about someone just marking time.

 

Another reason is the score from Alberto Iglesias, which won for best soundtrack at Cannes. When you’ve had your fill of obtrusive soundtracks, it’s a joy to hear one that actually fits the film you’re watching. Penélope Cruz doesn’t have a big role, but she’s always luminous and strikes the perfect balance of fire and ice. Plus, Almodóvar films always look stylish, even when they’re total rubbish. If I might return to the photo album metaphor, you might not like all of Pain and Glory, but there are images that jump off the page/screen and force you to take notice. But maybe it’s time for Almodóvar to stop making movies about himself.

 

Rob Weir