AT THE ARTHOUSE

Almodóvar's latest is a Broken puzzle

By David Theis

December 27th, 2009 at 2:00 PM

How cool is it to wake up on Christmas and find an Almodóvar movie under the tree? Or playing at the Angelika, at any rate.

Broken Embraces is the great Spaniard’s first film since 2006’s Volver, which was a perfectly fine entertainment. It marked the first time Penélope Cruz had a film placed on her strong shoulders and was asked to carry it, and she responded with a performance that included earth-mother sensuality—a Mediterranean earth mother, at any rate—and street-wise toughness. She was unapologetically a tough broad.

Almodóvar has pushed her in a different direction this time. She’s still dangerously desirable. But now the danger extends to herself, not just to the brutish men who are drawn to her. That’s because her Lena is also heartbreakingly vulnerable, a tragic heroine from a Douglas Sirk-style melodrama.

That melodrama forms one of the narrative boxes, or stories-within-stories, that Almodóvar plays with here. I’ve put off talking about the way he tells his story for this long because a) I’d need lots of space—and skill—to do it justice and b) I’m very afraid of making Broken Embraces sound like homework. Believe me, it’s not. The story’s complicated, but Almodóvar has become such a master of framing, and of narrative in general, that he’s able to make the viewer respond to his puzzles emotionally rather than intellectually.

The story begins in the apartment of a blind screenwriter who works (and lives) under the pseudonym of Harry Caine (Lluís Homar). Under his real name, Mateo Blanco, he had once been a top director, but a car accident blinded him 14 years before. Now he has to work in words rather than images. He gets a mysterious visit from a young man who wants to make a movie about how his cruel and powerful father ruined his life. He sees the movie as his revenge.

By his voice, Caine recognizes the young man as the son of his mortal enemy. This encounter triggers what you’d technically have to call a flashback, but that term is so woefully inadequate for the movie-within-a-movie that transpires, which is in fact the emotional heart of the movie. Cruz’ Lena was the cruel man’s mistress. Suffocating under his control and his riches, Lena decides to give acting a try. When the director, Blanco, falls in love with her during her audition, a battle for her heart and body begins between the director and the rich industrialist, who counts Lena as his most prized possession.

At the same time, there’s a battle within Lena for her own soul.

The rich man fights dirty. When Lena and Blanco disappear together, the rich man takes his revenge—on the film that they had been making together. He’d produced it himself, as favor to Lena, and after they’re gone he releases it in mutilated form.

Blanco ultimately loses Lena (I can’t tell you how, but it’s wrenching), along with his sight. Now, 14 years later, he can only begin to heal the past by reediting his adulterated film. And the fact that he can’t see is more a challenge than a curse.

Longtime Almodóvar watchers will recognize the compromised film as a retelling of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. This strange “remake” is both funny and sad. The scenes we see are quite amusing, but they also make us aware of how much time has passed for Almodóvar and for us. (The effect is oddly similar to seeing the Seinfeld “reunion show” on Curb Your Enthusiasm.)

Almodóvar has now turned to memory for inspiration. But he’s not nostalgic, strictly speaking. He’s still exploring, but no longer groping. He’s into the second or third draft of his ongoing masterpiece, which I’d have to count as the great film achievement of the last 30 years.

The film isn’t perfect. He now tries to cram so much story into each film that some elements get a line or two of expository dialogue, rather than the subplot they truly deserve. He seriously damaged the ending of Volver by doing just that. But when this film finally wobbles under its own narrative weight, Almodóvar rights it brilliantly, giving us a final image of ravishing melancholy.