Strange Way Of Life review – char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Almod­ó­var­i­an queer western

The title of Pedro Almodóvar’s 30-minute short film is a ref­er­ence to Por­tuguese fado singer Amália Rodrigues’ ​‘Estran­ha For­ma de Vida’ – a bal­lad about a woman with a rest­less heart. It plays a star­ring role in the Span­ish auteur’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with fash­ion house Saint Lau­rent, as singer Manu Rios plays an anony­mous bal­ladeer croon­ing on the streets of a sleepy Amer­i­can bor­der town. He’s clocked by Sil­va (Pedro Pas­cal), a gun­slinger return­ing after 25 years, sup­pos­ed­ly to check in with an old friend. The stage feels set for a stand-off.

Silva’s arrival elic­its a warm reac­tion from his old friend Jake (Ethan Hawke) who’s tak­en up the posi­tion of sher­iff in town – a far cry from the days of being wild he once shared with Sil­va. Their reunion gen­er­ates a com­plex web of emo­tions: excite­ment and affec­tion, then con­fu­sion and sus­pi­cion. After a night togeth­er, Jake gruffly notes that Sil­va isn’t on a social call. His son is on the wrong side of the law and, despite the his­to­ry between them, Jake isn’t about to let a guilty man walk free.

While Almod­ó­var cheek­i­ly sug­gest­ed that Strange Way of Life was his response to Broke­back Moun­tain, there are none of the sharp edges of Ang Lee’s film. Instead there’s a ten­der­ness which feels char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Almod­ó­var­i­an, as Jake and Sil­va rem­i­nisce about the days when they ran togeth­er – notably a night in Mex­i­co, which we see in a lush flash­back. It’s a roman­tic west­ern, with Hawke and Pas­cal pos­sess­ing an easy, believ­able chem­istry. To be able to con­vey a life­time of long­ing in such a short space of time is a tes­ta­ment to both their skill as actors and the focus of Almodóvar’s script, which doesn’t waste a sin­gle second.

Antho­ny Vac­carel­lo – head design­er at Saint Lau­rent, who co-pro­duced the film – pulls dou­ble duty as an exec­u­tive pro­duc­er and cos­tume design­er, but for a col­lab­o­ra­tion with a fash­ion house, Strange Way of Life nev­er feels like a pro­mo­tion­al film. The cos­tumes, in par­tic­u­lar a worn green jack­et that Pas­cal wears, are in keep­ing with the peri­od set­ting, and feel as con­sid­ered as they would in any of Almodóvar’s fea­ture-length projects. Sim­i­lar­ly, the cin­e­matog­ra­phy of his reg­u­lar DoP José Luis Alcaine empha­sis­es the colour and pas­sion of the world.

Against an arid back­drop of brown rocks and blue sky, Sil­va and Jake stand out, as though their only solace is each oth­er. The film’s only true flaw is its length. This is a world we could eas­i­ly inhab­it for much longer, and by the time the film reach­es its con­clu­sion, we’ve only just scratched the sur­face of Sil­va and Jake’s sto­ry. Brevi­ty might be the soul of wit, but when it comes to see­ing Almodóvar’s sweep­ing melo­dra­ma oper­ate in a new genre, it’s hard to not yearn for more.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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