Rated: MA15+
Written and Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar
Produced by: Agustín Almodóvar
Executive Producer: Esther García
Original score: Alberto Iglesias
Director of photography: José Luis Alcaine
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Nora Navas, Julieta Serrano, César Vicente, Asier Flores, Penélope Cruz.
Spanish with English subtitles.
‘If you don’t write or film, what do you do?’
‘Live, I guess.’
Pain and Glory is a drama, a life story shown in monologue and intimate conversation.
Salvador Mallo’s (Antonio Banderas) life is filled with patterns and colours, water and tiles, suspension and scars.
The story of the film circles his life as he remembers teaching a young builder to read and write when he was growing up in the catacombs with his mother, as he remembers his career writing and making films and the past disagreements with friend and actor, Alberto (Asier Etxeandia) whom he hasn’t seen since the premiere of his most successful film thirty-two years ago.
He remembers as the pain of his ailments take pieces from him, his back pain, his migraines, his choking – he can’t create anymore, but he can remember.
This is a film that bleeds the present and the past so the trigger of smoking heroin with the man described, ‘You’re the opposite side of that text,’ Salvador falls, taking him back to the time when he experienced his first desire, his first love, the escape from the ‘bad ring’ of Madrid, to get away from the temptations of addiction to Havana and the Ivory Coast.
But sometimes, love isn’t enough.
He has no regrets. To recover from his past, he writes the story.
So the past and present are intertwined like his writing translated into this film.
Director and writer, Pedro Almodóvar has taken pieces from his own life, translating them into the film like the character Salvador makes films about his past.
The hair, the setting of the apartment the same as the man himself, Pedro.
Antonio Banderas has just won the Cannes 2019 Best Actor Award (the film selected to compete for the Palme d’Or) for his performance here. And I can see why. He just seems to get better with age. His humble sincerity a warmth felt through the screen. He’s endearing.
And there’s more to the film than a character study as the scenes cut from the bright sun shining through the exposed roof of the catacomb house, to the animation of red broken lines like the branches of a tree exploding in the drawn lines of a brain, a contrast to the quiet suffering of a man embarrassed of his pain, refusing to allow his housekeeper to tie his laces, wearing loafers, catching taxis, lying in the dark.
But there are no complaints as he loses himself in memory.
This isn’t a sad film, more a poignant tale of all the darkness and light in life – sad and happy and true.
The overriding feeling I got from this film was grateful: life can be cruel, but it can also be kind.