OVP: Pain & Glory (2019)

Film: Pain & Glory (2019)
Actors: Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Asier Exteandia, Cecilia Roth
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-Antonio Banderas, International Feature Film-Spain)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Few working directors have the consistent motif and style of Pedro Almodovar.  In many ways he is the true heir to Alfred Hitchcock, not in terms of subject matter (though Almodovar is not above making a great thriller), but in the way that you know it's his movie from the film's start to the eventual finish.  He repeats cast members, he repeats stories, but they always feel full of feeling, of depth.  Even when it doesn't work, it still pretty much does-few directors are as well-equipped to handle style to get past gaps in substance as Pedro.  As a result, I was curious what Pain & Glory would do for the director.  In many ways, this feels like one of the most autobiographical movies in his filmography, and like so many directors who stray into their own stories, would this feel too indulgent, too personal, to work on a big-screen?

(Spoilers Ahead) As you can imagine since it's autobiographical, the movie is about a film director, in this case Salvador Mallo (Banderas), a once great filmmaker who is most noted for his picture Sabor, a movie he didn't approve of when it was released but nonetheless has been rediscovered by audiences.  The initial moments of the picture show him trying to reconnect with the film's star Alberto Crespo (Exteandia) whom he loathed at one point, and bad-mouthed to the point that Alberto's career never recovered (due to Crespo's drug use).  However, Mallo, suffering from debilitating pain due to a series of ailments, becomes hooked on heroin due to Crespo dealing with him, and we slowly see him remember his life during heroin highs, recalling his domineering mother (played when she's young by Cruz, and as an older woman by Julieta Serrano), and his lust after a local painter when he was a young man, Eduardo (Vicente).  We get brief interludes where we see Mallo with the love of his life Federico (Sbaraglia) one night (a man whom he abandoned, but still pines for in his work), and ultimately we see redemption, as Salvador kicks the heroin habit, gets surgery for his ailments, and goes back to work, circularly making a film that resembles Pain & Glory.

The film, like all of Almodovar's work, has a lot to offer.  Banderas has been getting Oscar buzz (though I don't think it's going to be loud enough for him to land for this), and it shows.  This is a big role for an actor who has long been Almodovar's muse, and while he doesn't play this as Pedro (his Salvador is more introverted, less flashy), you can see the director's inspiration in the care he gives his work & consideration of it.  Cruz is also good as the mother, an atypical part (in the last scene it's not entirely clear if Cruz has been playing the mother or an actress playing Salvador's mother), but she brings an understanding to the role that other actresses might have biffed.  She knows why her son is obsessed with Eduardo, and why he literally passes out after watching Eduardo bathe in front of him (to be fair-if you've seen this scene I'm surprised they didn't have resuscitation paddles outside the theater for patrons who passed out due to Vicente's sex appeal), but she's reluctant enough in her acceptance of it to not mention such a thing, for fear she'll have to condone it.  Other actresses would have found room for a "big scene" here, perhaps in an Oscar play, but Cruz (who already has an Oscar) doesn't need to to make sure that we know that her mother is all-knowing.

The film's drug haze feels tired at times-we've seen so many movies about the damages of drugs with famous artists recently with music biopic fever that I didn't really need this in yet another movie, and the "haziness providing clarity" is a pretty lazy trope for the flashbacks.  But Pain & Glory has a lot to offer even if it's not going to be one of the "mountains" in Pedro's filmography.  The scenes between Salvador & Federico are sweet and felt, the way we rarely see from mature romances onscreen where only young love is worth celebrating, and I loved the way that Pedro's script invests in a love of movies without ever having to have a series of expositional studies about classic cinema. Pain & Glory takes some turns and risks that don't pay off, but at it's best it's more than worth the price of a ticket, the price of admission to see a master of his craft.