Watching: Pain and Glory

[white_hart]

Despite being a regular cinemagoer, I'm not at all familiar with Pedro Almodóvar's films, so I didn't really know what to expect from his latest film, Pain and Glory. It certainly wasn't what I actually got, which was a quiet, thoughtful film about ageing and learning to live with the pain of the past, beautifully shot and full of splashes of bright colour, and with a soundtrack that made me think of Arvo Pärt in its spareness and spaciousness.

Pain and Glory stars Antonio Banderas as filmmaker Salvador Mallo. Still trying to come to terms with the death of his mother and adjusting to living with a number of chronic mental and physical health conditions, Mallo finds his mind straying back to his childhood while he also revisits other key turning points in his life - a break with the friend who starred in his first film, a failed relationship in the early 1980s. Just as we are told that Mallo's films draw on his life, it's hard to imagine that Mallo isn't in at least some ways an avatar of Almodóvar himself, but the film manages not to feel self-indulgent, and I liked it a lot. (Also, it was very nice to be in an air-conditioned cinema for a couple of hours.)

Comments

[girlyswot]

I heard a review of it which said definitely autobiographical, and actually sort of about Almadovar and Banderas, who starred in many of his earlier films before leaving for Hollywood.

[white_hart]

That would make sense.