Pain and Glory

Oscar-nominated as Best International Film, Pain and Glory is Pedro Almodovar’s bittersweet, thinly veiled, semi-autobiographical drama, revolving around a fictional Spanish filmmaker, Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), who contemplates how much fire he still has in his belly. “Without filming, my life is meaningless,” he declares. Living alone in Madrid, melancholic Mallo suffers from several ailments, primarily headaches, stemming from fused vertebrae, coupled with depression. A multitude of memories appear through a variety of flashbacks. There’s poverty-plagued young Salvador (Asier Flores) accompanying his mother Jacinta (Penelope Cruz) to a stream, where she and her friends sing as they do laundry near the caves of Paterna. Growing up, Salvador becomes a choirboy and experiences a sexual awakening watching bricklayer Eduardo (Cesar Vicente) washing his muscled body. Much later, when she visits him, elderly Jacinta (Julieta Serrano) chides Salvador: “You haven’t been a good son.” Prompted by an upcoming Cinematheque celebration, reclusive Salvador tracks down Alberto (Asier Etxeandia), an actor to whom he hasn’t spoken in 30 years. Debauched Alberto introduces Salvador to heroin to ease his pain. When Alberto discovers one of Salvador’s monologues, he insists on performing it before an audience that includes Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), who once had an affair with Salvador. That leads to a poignant conversation between these two late middle-aged men about their sublimated desires. Almodovar views this episodic, visually compelling confessional as completing a trilogy, starting with Laws of Desire and continued with Bad Education. Oscar-nominated Banderas delivers a magnificent performance as his alter-ego. It’s a structured and sublimely stylized, cinematically summarizing Pedro Almodovar’s life and work. Highly recommended. (S. Granger)