Broken EmbracesRated 14 Accompaniment (Sexual Content, Mature Theme) ~ Runs 128 minutes
Dir.: Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2009
Penélope Cruz, Blanca Portillo, Lluís Homar
In Spanish with English subtitles
Golden Globe nominee for Best Foreign Film; 12 other Award wins and nominations so far.
“A vibrant, mature love letter to the making of movies, the meaning of movies, and the dark-eyed muse Penélope Cruz, Broken Embraces doesn't so much break new ground in the filmmaker's instantly recognizable terrain as deepen an Almodóvarian's understanding of how this uniquely stylish Spanish artist sees the world. And as every frame of this chic and playful comedy/melodrama attests, he sees the world - of personal relationships and creative collaboration, of natural landscape and man-made decor - through a cinephile's magnifying lens. Lluís Homar plays a blind screenwriter who was once a movie director and who once loved his leading lady (Cruz, delectable). As for the lady, she was once the mistress of a jealous tycoon, who once bullied his gay son into spying on the mistress by documenting the shooting of their ill-fated collaboration - a movie bearing a crazy resemblance to Almodóvar's own classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The plot thickens! Further fun: Many of the characters go by two different names. So best advice for optimum viewing is, see Broken Embraces...twice.” - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly. “Almodovar's passionate new film. A blind man, once a director, now a writer, learns the producer of his final film has died. He still hates this man. Flashbacks reveal the history of their relationship, and the woman between them. In the present, the dead man's son enlists him in a project to gain vengeance on his father, and old secrets are discovered. A voluptuary of a film, drunk on primary colors, caressing Penelope Cruz, using the devices of a Hitchcock to distract us with surfaces while the sinister uncoils beneath. Four stars.” - Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times.
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