Pain & Glory
Pedro Almodóvar always delivers with fast, funny, colourful, thoughtful, emotional, camp entertainment . . . Women on The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother, The Skin I Live In, for example . . . But Pain & Glory is self-reflective, the director looks inward with a moving, meditative maturity that we’ve never seen before.
His alter-ego – Salvador Mallo (Banderas), is suffering from just about every illness under the sun and now faced with an awkward reunion with actor Alberto Crespo . . . he introduces Salvador to heroin as a cure for his health issues. From this point Pain & Glory morphs into a series of reflections and reconciliations; with Alberto, his old lover Federico and finally his mother (played in flashbacks by Penélope Cruz and in the present by Julieta Serrano).
These are poignant memories – his mother singing whilst washing clothes, a sexual awakening, a town celebrating with fireworks . . . make the film the feel tender and sweet. Banderas, who won the Best Actor award at Cannes, is fabulous, his performance is world-weary and downbeat, as his past catches up with him. Pain & Glory sits well with Almodóvar’s previous work even though it feels rather low key.
The film was released in 2019 and is available on DVD & Blu Ray as well as various streaming channels. Look out for his new movie ‘Parallel Mothers’ which is released in January
