Broken Embraces - Los abrazos rotos (15)
Director: Pedro Almodovar , Spain, 2009, 128 mins
Cast: Penelope Cruz, Lluis Homar, Blanca Portillo, Jose luis Gomez, Ruben Ochandiano
We have had countless films (Scent of a Woman, At First Sight, Ray) that involve a blind man’s journey to climb farther than the eye can see but none have brought out the vividness of a blind man’s hidden pain over his lost love in a more poignant manner than Almodovar’s latest film.
The film starts in present day Madrid, the home of filmmaker Mateo Blanco (Homar) who’s been blind ever since a car accident on the island of Lanzarote that also claimed the life of his lover Lena(Cruz). Since the tragedy, he has settled to writing scripts and has been known only by his pen name Harry Caine. He is looked after by his loyal former production manager Judit Gracia (Portillo) and her son Diego (Tamar Novas), his secretary, typist and guide.
The story kicks off when the mysterious Ray X (Ochaniano) appears on Harry’s doorstep, wanting him to write a script to avenge his bullying father and the story goes into flashback. Suddenly the girl from the torn photograph comes to life. We go back to 1992, where the innocent looking Lena (Cruz) is forced into the arms of her wealthy and unscrupulous stockbroker boss Ernesto Martel, brilliantly played by newcomer Jose Luis Gomez. At first he appears benevolent in his actions but then he reveals a hidden ruthlessness. While Lena’s love of acting sets in motion a series of events, from which there is no way out for the main protagonists.
Broken Embraces is filled with homages to Almodovar’s previous films, as in the casting of Blanca Portillo who appeared in Volver and Tamar Novas, who featured in The Sea Inside not to mention the film within a film subplot; Chicas y Maletas (Girls and Suitcases), which bears a striking similarity to the director’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown of 21 years earlier.
The film’s title echoes throughout but most directly in a scene, where Lena and Matteo are lying in each other’s arms on a couch watching Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia starring George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman. It is the scene where the Pompeii workers are carefully digging up remains of the perished city and they stumble upon the immortalised lava bodies of a man and a woman. Art imitates life as like Ingrid Lena (Cruz) can’t hold back her tears but unlike Ingrid’s character she is embraced by Mateo the person she loves. However like Sanders and Bergman she feels it deep down that their love is doomed.
Movie aficionados will recognise the many references in Broken Embraces to themes and plot devices from Hitchcock’s work, as in Vertigo’s mysterious woman who is able to morph her appearance, while Ray X’s voyeurism and constant filming of the couple to satisfy his father’s quest for the truth echoes Jimmy Stewart’s character in Rear Window – memories from the movie past, which Almodovar uses to great effect.
What is particularly likeable about this film is that the flashback plot device does not zap too frequently from the past to the present like some turgid time travelling fantasy. And all kudos to Lluis Homar, who avoids Pacino style clichés and makes this character truly his own. The actor succeeds particularly well in showing in a quiet manner the anguish Blanco is suffering, especially in the scenes after his tragedy, when he represses his former self but then is given a chance to live life to the full by finally accepting his past, demonstrating as in other movies which employ the flashback device such as Carlito’s Way and Once Upon a Time in America that you can’t run away from your past as your former self will always come back to haunt you.
Even if one were to walk into the cinema not knowing this is an Almodovar film, you would soon get it, as this film has the director’s signature written all over it in the way the concept of family and the Father and son theme resonate throughout the film. This is particularly telling in the scenes where Harry tells Diego what happened fourteen years before, just as a father tells his little child a story so that he’ll fall asleep. Everything falls into place in the very last scene as Almodovar’s family theme surfaces, when Harry, Diego and Judit are sitting in the editing room putting the film together. There may be those who will accuse Almodovar of biting off more than he can chew as in this in the way he crams into it everything he loves about movies but nevertheless the film’s pace never lets up in the way it keeps the audience enthralled by a journey that begins with tragedy and reaches its climax through redemption.
The film is part of the International Film Festival and is being shown exclusively at the Embassy Cinemas on October 28 at 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and 6 November at 9 p.m.