Broken Embraces (2009)

Director / Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar  Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto  Music: Alberto Iglesias

Stars: Penelope Cruz, Lluis Homar, Blanca Portillo

Rating:            * * * *

Illicit love, dark secrets, self-reflexive cinephilia and a drop-dead gorgeous Penelope Cruz – it could only be Pedro Almodóvar.

The latest homage by Spain’s greatest-living auteur to his favourite latter-day leading lady, the movies and, well, himself, starts with through-the-viewfinder, grainy shots of Cruz and co-star Lluis Homar on a film set preparing for a scene. In the press notes, Almodóvar reveals that this is genuine rehearsal footage, with neither actor aware they were being filmed. If you find this a creepy violation of the artistic process, then Broken Embraces is not for you. But if you get a secret thrill from a director mining his own relationships and work in pursuit of another immaculately upholstered melodrama, then brace yourself for another of the maestro’s vice-like, taffeta-soft clinches.

The web of relationships this time out, straddling two timelines – the mid-1990s and late noughties – involves, in no particular order: writer-director Mateo (Homar), in earlier times a high-flying, libidinous filmmaker, then latterly a blind recluse who takes the name Harry Caine; his agent Judit (Portillo) an acid-tongued single mother (warning!) and her son / Harry’s assistant Diego (Novas); millionaire tycoon Ernesto Martel (Gomez); and his PA-turned-mistress Lena (Cruz), who yearns to be an actress and gets a role in Mateo’s latest comedy, bankrolled by her lover. Martel also insists that his semi-estranged, closeted son Ernesto Jr (Ochandiano) hang out on the film set, documenting everything for an ultra-personal ‘Making Of.’ Naturally he captures the growing attraction between Mateo and Lena, unleashing passion, violence and ultimately tragedy.

This doesn’t begin to encompass even half of the twists and turns in Almodóvar’s labyrinthine story, which seems to plough into major emotional signposts – Betrayal! Grief! Revenge! – like a drunk driver nailing traffic cones. It’s meaty, heady stuff, which, constantly probing the duality of filmmaking and behind-the-scenes shooting, turns into less a hall of mirrors than one giant mirrorball, dazzling, reflecting and fragmenting Almodóvar’s usual flamboyant predilections.

Broken Embraces is effectively a melodrama / film noir hybrid, as if he spliced the negatives of Talk to Her and Bad Education on one giant art deco moviola editing machine. Add in the habitual movie references – Sirk, Rosellini and co – to Mateo’s film-within-a-film, Girls and Suitcases, which, when finally revealed, is clearly a revamping of a certain Almodóvar candy-coloured 80s comedy and it’s not just cineastes who might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown trying to keep up with all the references.

So yes, it’s a hermetically contained meta-movie; a deftly homemade, origami-like envelope, sealed with Almodóvar’s own lipstick kiss and mailed to himself. And yes, the danger of navel-gazing is probably more pronounced than ever (though Almodóvar’s always had one eye on his crotch). At times, it can all get a little too cute: when Cruz lip-syncs her own onscreen confession, or when Ernesto Jr turns up in the 2008 storyline, announcing himself as ‘Ray X’ (X-Ray, geddit?), the balance tips from smart to clever-clever.

But, what ultimately overrides these over-elaborate flourishes are Almodóvar’s abiding passion for, and belief in, cinema and how it impacts on real people and genuine emotions. He may dress up Cruz as Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, but he breaks her like her own fully rounded, complex woman. We can re-edit our own lives, he suggests, and if Almodóvar’s leading by example, his own concoctions are simply too fun, too moving and too inventive (Diego and Mateo casually toss off a high-concept vampire plot that Hollywood would bite their arm off to have thought of) to deny.

Almodóvar through the looking glass: smart, sexy, solipsistic and yet still effortlessly enjoyable.