1.8.10

Movie Review: Broken Embraces

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

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous1/8/10 16:01

    hmmmm... I think he was the one who did the movie about the woman in a coma... and there was a scene where a guy goes into a giant vagina... I am not too sure I can be convinced to watch another by him :)
    - Cath

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  2. That was one of his... Watch Volver and let me know what you think.

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  3. i LOVE pedro almodovar! i remember watching matador and women on the verge of a nervous breakdown back in the early 90's. almodovar is so wacky. I really liked "todo sobre de mi madre" and "mala educacion".

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  4. I only know him since All About My Mother. I badly need to expand my knowledge of his repertoire.

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  5. omg, in 'mala educacion' i only watched it because it had that hottie gael garcia bernal! yowzah. :) he's also good in 'el crimen del padre amaro' (playing a pervo catholic priest, but then that's redudant, isn't it)/that film not by almodovar, and 'y tu mama tambien'.

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