Pain and Glo­ry – first look review

Pedro Almod­ó­var has been bring­ing films to Cannes for two decades now, and while he’s col­lect­ed a hand­ful of awards in that time – most notably Best Direc­tor in 1999 for All About My Moth­er and Best Screen­play in 2006 for Volver – he’s nev­er won the Big One. Well, there’s every rea­son to believe this will be his year, not just because of the Latin flavour of the com­pe­ti­tion jury but because his 22^nd fea­ture is an absolute world-beater.

Pain and Glo­ry finds the Span­ish auteur in an intro­spec­tive mood. It fol­lows a mid­dle-aged Madrid-based film­mak­er named Sal­vador Mal­lo (Anto­nio Ban­deras, bear­ing a pass­ing resem­blance to Almod­ó­var) as he reflects on his life choic­es; per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al, good and bad. Over the course of the film Almod­ó­var builds a com­plex pic­ture of a gift­ed but fick­le artist whose glo­ry days look to be long behind him. We also dis­cov­er that Sal­vador suf­fers from chron­ic back pain and occa­sion­al chok­ing fits, which fur­ther explains his sud­den urge to rec­on­cile his for­mer tri­umphs and tragedies.

Ear­ly on, Sal­vador recalls how being pro­mot­ed to the posi­tion of soloist in the school choir afford­ed him aca­d­e­m­ic immu­ni­ty. In lieu of a prop­er for­mal edu­ca­tion, he describes acquir­ing knowl­edge by expe­ri­en­tial means, learn­ing geog­ra­phy while tour­ing Europe with his films and becom­ing inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the human anato­my through a suc­ces­sion of debil­i­tat­ing ail­ments. (Who else but Almod­ó­var could take a sub­ject as clin­i­cal as the human cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem and illus­trate it in such thrilling­ly sen­su­al terms?)

The main cat­a­lyst for Salvador’s stroll down mem­o­ry lane is the upcom­ing anniver­sary of his high­ly-regard­ed film, Sabor, which Almod­ó­var tan­ta­lis­ing­ly shows us noth­ing of save a por­tion of the end cred­its. In Eng­lish ​‘Sabor’ lit­er­al­ly trans­lates to ​‘taste’, and its gar­ish poster, which proud­ly adorns the wall of lead actor Alberto’s (Asi­er Etx­e­an­dia) home despite his long­stand­ing feud with the direc­tor, is vin­tage Almod­ó­var: a pair of plump lips with a straw­ber­ry tongue sug­ges­tive­ly pok­ing out set against a scar­let red background.

Hav­ing recent­ly revis­it­ed Sabor with fresh eyes, Sal­vador recog­nis­es its qual­i­ty yet is reluc­tant to speak about its lega­cy and skips out on a ret­ro­spec­tive Q&A screen­ing, pre­fer­ring instead to kill time with Alber­to. While Almod­ó­var is unam­bigu­ous about Salvador’s tal­ent as a film­mak­er, he is scep­ti­cal of the man he has become. In var­i­ous encoun­ters with char­ac­ters from his past, Sal­vador reveals him­self to be impetu­ous, nar­cis­sis­tic and self-destruc­tive. He is sur­round­ed by peo­ple who care about him but rarely dis­plays affec­tion and almost nev­er ini­ti­ates it.

In a dis­arm­ing­ly mov­ing scene, Alber­to per­forms a mono­logue penned by Sal­vador called ​‘Addic­tion’, a frank con­fes­sion­al recount­ing a brief but intense­ly pas­sion­ate romance that end­ed three decades ear­li­er after becom­ing soured by his lover’s hero­in depen­den­cy. The ter­ri­ble irony is that Sal­vador has him­self start­ed using the drug to sup­ple­ment the com­par­a­tive­ly mild cock­tail of pre­scrip­tion opi­ates he takes for his bad back, rou­tine­ly chas­ing the drag­on to the point of intox­i­cat­ed reverie.

As with Alfon­so Cuarón’s Roma, Pain and Glo­ry feels ripped from its maker’s sub­con­scious, although it is unclear to what extent Salvador’s sto­ry mir­rors Almodóvar’s own. For instance, young Sal­vador (Asi­er Flo­res) is encour­aged by his moth­er (Pené­lope Cruz) to teach his illit­er­ate neigh­bours how to read and write when in fact that is how Almodóvar’s moth­er earned a liv­ing. Almod­ó­var only makes per­son­al films, and he has said that this one left him ​“emo­tion­al­ly naked”. It’s no won­der he has vowed nev­er to pub­lish an auto­bi­og­ra­phy – what would be the point when his work does the talk­ing so hon­est­ly and eloquently?

If Pain and Glo­ry sounds self-indul­gent and nar­row in its focus, it is any­thing but. As well as express­ing his views on love, loss and film­mak­ing, Almod­ó­var address­es broad­er polit­i­cal and social themes, offer­ing thin­ly-veiled cri­tiques of Catholi­cism and Gen­er­al Franco’s author­i­tar­i­an lead­er­ship. Yet the film always retains a sense of inti­ma­cy. Most evoca­tive­ly Almod­ó­var empha­sis­es the cleans­ing, puri­fy­ing prop­er­ties of water: Sal­vador under­goes aquat­ic ther­a­py ses­sions fol­low­ing an oper­a­tion to fuse his ver­te­brae; in the riv­er close to the vil­lage where he grew up, his moth­er and oth­er local women wash linen and sing in the Mediter­ranean sun; a pail filled with soapy water trig­gers a young boy’s sex­u­al awakening.

Almod­ó­var gives many of his reg­u­lar play­ers key roles, from Cecil­ia Roth as a glam­orous grand dame, to Nora Navas as Salvador’s dot­ing per­son­al assis­tant, to Juli­eta Ser­ra­no as his dying moth­er, to com­pos­er Alber­to Igle­sias, whose lush strings bring the melo­dra­ma to an agree­able pitch, to cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er José Luis Alcaine, whose glid­ing cam­er­a­work gives the film a gen­tle, relaxed rhythm. But it’s Ban­deras who makes the most telling con­tri­bu­tion. At 58 he remains a charis­mat­ic and com­mand­ing pres­ence, and although his eyes still have that unmis­tak­able movie star sparkle there’s a cer­tain vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and a world-weari­ness behind them now.

Before we leave Sal­vador, one final rem­i­nis­cence sparks a moment of pro­found clar­i­ty. Sit­ting down at his com­put­er, he con­fi­dent­ly taps out the title of a script which we sense will be the late-career mas­ter­piece he was always des­tined to make: ​‘The First Desire’ (it’s no coin­ci­dence that Almodóvar’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny is called El Deseo, or ​‘The Desire’). Fit­ting­ly, Almod­ó­var has deliv­ered just that.