Hello,My name is Broken Embraces or Los Abrazos Rotos to the pretentious. It is thanks to me that Stephen has realized that Almodovar is probably his favourite director even though I'm not the best movie that Almodovar has made in recent years.
I'm also quite a bit darker than many of his films containing one scene that can nearly be called an action scene and another moment at which E suddenly exclaimed "At what point did this become a Hitchcock movie?!"
In a nutshell (I would not like to give away more than my nutshell as to know any more about the hazelnut inside me would detract from the deliciousness of said hazelnut), I flip between two stories - one told in the present about a blind filmmaker who has mysteriously taken on a new name and identity and is shaken up when he discovers that a wealthy businessman has died; and events fourteen years earlier when said businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman whose father is dying of stomach cancer.
I'm a bit on the long side and, as such, meander a bit through the third act, especially after the connection between the two stories is revealed early on and the final fifteen minutes feels like a protracted denouement, albeit a hilarious protracted denouement. If you get Almodovar, you will enjoy me a lot. But if you don't like his whimsical style of colour, beauty, humour, whimsy, strong fully realized characters and complicated yet rewarding and accessible fast moving plots. Or reading subtitles. Then stay away.
Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss,
Broken Embraces
