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| Eduardo (Cesar Vicente) with young Salvador (Asier Flores) |
MA15+, 114 minutes
5 Stars
Review by © Jane Freebury
The actor
Antonio Banderas and director Pedro Almodovar first worked together in the
1980s and helped make each other famous with sexy, taboo-breaking films like Law
of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Tie Me Up! Tie
Me Down! It was the post-Franco era in Spain and time to tear down decades
of fascist repression.
Pain and
Glory reflects
on the central relationships in Salvador’s (Banderas) life – mother, lovers and
actor collaborators. It’s a very personal collaboration between the actor and
filmmaker, like a confessional from a couple of famous men of the big screen.
We first
see Banderas, as successful film director Salvador Mallo, holding a pose while
meditating at the bottom of a swimming pool. The watery world draws
memories of his early childhood to the surface, memories of laundry day at the
river’s edge with his young mother (played in these scenes by another
Almodovian muse, Penelope Cruz).
A gift for directors, fromTarantino to Almodovar,
Banderas has had health issues of his own
As he
catches up with an old friend, Salvador reveals that he has stopped writing and
directing. Her surprise that he, of all people, has become reclusive and
inactive, is a clue to the kind of person he was.
In later
flashbacks, while in conversation with his elderly mother, he listens in such a
touching way to her complaints that he disappointed her. Later, in a sweet
scene between Banderas and Julieta Serrano, who plays Jacinta in her old age,
she explains exactly how she wishes to be laid out when she dies.
In
conversation with his long lost friend, Salvador recounts his various ailments,
a list of enemies within that have beset him. His asthma, headaches, tinnitus
and the sciatica that has given him a bad back. It’s a scary anatomical collage
of medical imagery, almost as arresting as the opening titles over melting
images that turn from solid to liquid before our eyes.
The state
Salvador is in is a million miles from the irresistible hunk Banderas played in
Almodovar’s early films, or from the swaggering hero he has played in
Hollywood.
Another
key relationship, not so explicitly referenced, is with the gay lover Salvador
had when they were young men, before Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia) left for
Argentina and took a wife. The scenes between them 30 years later at Salvador’s
apartment in Madrid, including the prominent kitchen with its bright red
cupboards that looks a lot like the director’s own, are lovely to watch too.
Yet
another key relationship is the actor Alberto (Asier Etxeandia) from whom
Salvador has also been estranged many years. Both Etxeandia and Sbaraglia give
terrific performances too.
Handsome,
tousle-haired, with a shy twinkle in his eye, Banderas has always been a
welcome sight on screen. A gift for directors, from Quentin Tarantino to
Almodovar, looking for a swashbuckler with devil-may-care (Desperado) or
for a man for women to desire. Yet, here in Pain and Glory the presence
we became used to is barely present. Banderas has been chastened by a real-life
health issues of his own – a recent heart attack.
These
life stories of these two creative collaborators, the film director and his
alter ego, wind around each other like a double, double helix. Except that
Banderas isn’t gay.
Almodovar's witty, naughty, exuberant early work has developed and matured
It is
like two of them put their heads together to create an intelligent, amusing and
moving film with deep meaning for them both. Their energy coalesces around the
wonderful performance that won Banderas the best actor award at Cannes earlier
this year.
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| Salvador (Antonio Banderas) and Alberto (Asier Etxeandia) |
Since I
became captivated by Almodovar’s witty, naughty, exuberant early films, he has
remained one of my favourite filmmakers. All the while, his distinctive
filmmaking - Volver and All About My Mother and Talk to Her among
his best - has evolved, developed more depth and matured.
It isn’t
surprising to hear in interview that another key relationship in Almodovar’s
life has been the cinema, the world in which he says he still lives today. It’s
a place of warmth and sensuality, of wit and wisdom, and as we see here, not
without regrets.
Pain and
Glory is a
superior work from Pedro Almodovar with an intensely sensitive performance from
Antonio Banderas. Both men may have been the bad boy and seen it all, but we
didn’t know about this gentle, reflective side deep within.
First
published in print and online by the Canberra Times on 9 November 2019, and also published at Jane's blog
