Pain & Glory

Pedro Almodóvar is in an intro­spec­tive mood. His 22^nd fea­ture fol­lows a mid­dle-aged Madrid-based film­mak­er named Sal­vador Mal­lo (Anto­nio Ban­deras) 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.

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? 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’. Fit­ting­ly, Almodóvar has deliv­ered just that.