Los abrazos rotos

This is a very complex thriller, but also very rewarding. This is director Pedro Almodovar's film with the broadest spectrum. There are numerous plot's and subplots and it all seems a bit confusing, but once again, Almodovar brilliantly pulls it all together by the films end. Penelope Cruz is radiantly beautiful and gives her usual excellent performance. Lluis Homar, Blanca Portillo and Jose Luis Gomez give superb performances. Almodovar is so amazingly visual, and there are several unforgettable images in Broken Embraces. The characters develop so incredibly well and the blending of all the stories is so striking to watch. Superbly done.

TTechnically beautiful, and well acted by the leads (some of the supporting cast is less than stellar), but there's a bit too much in this film-noir/comedy/romantic tragedy that feels over- the-top, for it to be a great film. And the homages to Hitchcock, Sirk, Amodovar's younger self, etc. walk the line between amusing and distracting. That said, this did improve on a second viewing, and became a more emotional and satisfying experience. A now blind writer remembers his past as a director with a different name who had a great love affair with his leading lady (Penelope Cruz, beautiful and wonderful as always), much to the fury of her powerful, industrialist sugar-daddy. Never boring, often enthralling, but somehow ultimately just a tiny touch less than the sum of its parts.

Pedro Almodovar's latest, "Broken Embraces," is like a high-class telenovela for the art-house crowd.

Its love triangle - involving a film director (Lluis Homar), his gorgeous lead actress (Penelope Cruz) and her elderly, abusive boyfriend (Jose Luis Gomez) who's financing the film on which they're working - spans the period from 1994 to 2008. In the present time, the financier, Ernesto Martel, has just died, while the director, Mateo Blanco, who has since become blind, has plans for writing another film. But what's become of Lena, the girl of both of their dreams, in the intervening years?

Structurally, the movie divides its focus fairly evenly between the two time periods. The intricately plotted narrative unravels like a conventional mystery story, with clues being dropped in at key moments and character connections and motivations becoming ever more clearly defined as the movie goes on.

This isn't prime Almodovar, by any means, but the customary florid melodrama, color-rich palette and elegant direction make it a worthy addition to the director's oeuvre.

There's never been any doubt about Pedro Almodovar's unquestioned, unstoppable love for all things cinema, a fact that pops up frequently in his body of work, most notably the autobiographical Bad Education. Like that intrigue-heavy melodrama, Broken Embraces was shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, with many critics and bookmakers speculating about the director finally winning the Palme d'Or after many unsuccessful attempts (the closest he came, apparently, was with the stunning Volver). Of course, the movie received zero awards (with the top prize going to Michael Haneke, another "perennial loser" so to speak) and left many people who saw it indifferent. The reason? Almodovar keeps making the exact same films year after year.

The "hero" of Broken Embraces is a Spanish screenwriter (Lluis Homar, who played the older priest in Bad Education) who calls himself Harry Caine (a mixture of fictional character Harry Palmer and the actor playing him, Michael Caine, or possibly a play on how Italians and Spaniards phonetically pronounce the English word "hurricane"). He's blind, and has gone off on a soul-searching journey to deal with a tragedy that occurred 14 years earlier. As the mystery surrounding his past unravels, flashbacks are used to depict a "happier" time, when he could still see, was known as Mateo Blanco and tried to make his last film, on the set of which he met and fell in love with actress Lena (Penélope Cruz), who unfortunately was involved with another, more powerful man...

It's easy to see why people choose to dislike the film: they're right, there's nothing really original in the screenplay (the "solution" to the mystery is easy to guess), in fact Almodovar seems to be going on autopilot, hitting the melodrama button without bothering to make sure he's doing it the right way. But that doesn't mean he never does a good job: visually, Broken Embraces is as enchanting as Volver, and if there's one thing the director hardly ever gets wrong, it's casting: Penélope Cruz is beautiful and convincingly vulnerable at the same time, Homar elicits enough sympathy as Mateo/Harry, and the "villain" of the piece (José Luis Gomez) is acceptably solid.

As for the self-referential streak in Almodovar's production (there's at least one in-joke in every film), he really hits gold this time, with fake footage of Mateo's lost film coming off as a clever pastiche of earlier hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which starred his other muse Carmen Maura. That scene alone justifies watching the film at least once. Broken Embraces may not be vintage Almodovar, but he's worth checking out even when he's "slacking".

Make no mistake this is a very accomplished film. However, it seems to me there is a significant problem with the first half hour. The characters as portrayed at this point are really wooden and do not ring 'true'. We're effectively being told a back story that seems to have no relevance to the story as it unfolds and ultimately how it concludes. This part could be dropped/cut without too much detriment. Of all of Pedro A's films this is the one that provides the most unexpected laughs. Oh yes please, I'd like to see that girl and the suitcase film - it looks great fun. Penelope Cruz is absolutely stunning - even when she is doing the bad acting routine she gets it spot on. Brilliant. She deserves far more recognition for her acting skills than she gets.