Pedro Almodovar is one of the great movie directors, Penelope Cruz holds equal status as an actress. Put them together, as in "Broken Embraces," which opens here today, and an above-average movie, with a strong story and superior production and entertainment values, is assured.
This is the fifth time Almodovar and Cruz have worked together, and the first collaboration since "Volver," in 2006, when she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, losing to Helen Mirren in "The Queen." Cruz won in the Best Supporting Actress category last year for her work in Woody Allen's "Vicky Christina Barcelona."
As usual, Almodovar's story (he wrote the screenplay, too) deals with love and its pain, the giddy taste and the bitter aftertaste of revenge. Our hero is a former film director named Mateo Blanco (an excellent Lluis Homar) who, 14 years earlier, directed a movie called "Girls and Suitcases," which pays homage to, and shows overtones of Almodar's 1988 "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." Subsequent to that, he was blinded in an auto accident, changed his name to Harry Caine, writes and lives quietly under the care of Judit (the wonderful Blanca Portillo), once his key production assistant, and her son.
Almodovar's character names are a conundrum. Harry Caine? A violent storm, or a tribute to Harry Lime of "The Third Man," or to the ill-fated Navy destroyer of "The Caine Mutiny," with Captain Queeg in charge? Mateo Blanco? A clean, blank slate?
Cruz, maybe the most beautiful woman in the world, is her usual glorious self and a constant reminder of when Caine was Blanco. She was in the movie, and she was a play-for-pay person, and she was the mistress of a local power broker until Blanco moved in.
Almodovar moves smoothly across time and space, and "Broken Embraces," blending the humorous and the serious in fine style, is a superior film.
At the Plaza Frontenac
-Joe
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