Premise: Harry Caine, a blind screenwriter, gets a strange visit from a man who wants to co-write a movie with him. After mysteriously rejecting the man's offer, Caine explains to his assistant, Diego, how he knows the man and why he wants nothing to do with him. In a series of flashbacks, he tells Diego a noir-ish story about an older film he was directing, the wealthy and treacherous man bankrolling his film and the man's mistress, a complex and alluring secretary-turned-aspiring actress (Penelope Cruz). Through this story, we learn how Caine's film was defaced and how his life was changed forever.
Big Draw? Pedro Almodovar's use of Penelope "The Muse" Cruz is excellent. Her versatility is at full view: once a helpless and heartbroken caretaker of her ill father; then a reluctant mistress, pampered but disgusted; and finally a lovestruck participant in a torrid affair. As someone who is not usually an admirer of Penelope's, my appreciation of her here is notable. Why see it? It's something different. Almodovar's films usually are. While being described as a "noir thriller," Los Abrazos Rotos is an odd hybrid: It begins as a darkly comic mystery in the style of The Player, evolves into a Hitchcockian romance and ends as a meditation on film-making as art and evidence (think: Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending meets Haneke's Cache. I can't believe I just wrote that sentence). Watching this genre-defying drama is like taking a vacation from the typically predictable and maudlin dramas that are Oscar-fodder year after year.
Any problems? The only major flaw of this film is that it drags in parts, which is kid of ironic* since one major theme of the movie is the power of editing. Whole scenes could have been skipped, and the flashback contains more information that is really necessary to create the full range of ideas and emotions the film wants to use. It's only 105 minutes, but it feels like more than two hours.
*or perhaps it's intended, like Adpatation, expressing its content through its form.
2 comments:
I just saw this last night, and it's definitely worth checking out. You described it as Woody Allen meets Michael Haneke. I'd describe it as Almodovar does De Palma.
I see a resemblance to Blow Out, I suppose. But unlike De Palma, Almodovar's music selection (and volume) was not completely retarded. ;)
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