BROKEN EMBRACES

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

 

Pedro Almodovar does an end-run around his own checkered career with an oddly constructed but nevertheless stylish genre blender colored with self-referential narrative splashes that fail to create a sufficiently clear vision.

Famous for finding his stories and developing them as he works, Almodovar only half-articulates this film's idea's about passion, fidelity, jealousy, and the filmmaking process. Lluis Homar plays director-turned-screenwriter Harry Caine — formerly "Mateo Blanco," before a car crash that has robbed him of his vision while dating an actress (Penelope Cruz) behind her director-boyfriend's back.

Telenovela baby.

Almodovar takes liberties by setting Cruz's character Lena in "Chicks and Suitcases," a film-within-the-film loosely drawn from his 1988 "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

During these over-prioritized scenes of situation comedy the audience is left to ponder the ineffectiveness of the film's thematic emphasis on the significance of editing.

There might very well have been a good movie lurking between Almodovar's final cut and the cutting-room floor, but what we see here is a flawed sampler of comedy, noir, melodrama, and luscious compositions.

Rated R. 128 mins.