Broken Embraces

Cecil says: I must confess I am not a fan of films about film-making. They seem so self-indulgent and really only speak to people who work in the film industry. So I was disappointed to come away from Almodovar's latest thinking just that.

The plot in a nutshell: film director has an accident which blinds him and after the accident he carries on his life as a completely different character: Harry Caine, the blind writer. Everyone goes along with this new character, new name, new personality, but then someone comes back on the scene from the film director's former life to blur the boundaries and challenges everything. The film switches back and forth between the present and the past so that we gradually put together the story of what happened in the run up to the accident and we see how Harry Caine deals with what comes to light.

The trouble is, although it was quite interesting to see how the two lives joined together, the film itself did drag on. It felt like it hadn't been edited enough and some of the scenes could easily have been left out. Well over two hours long and could have been 90 minutes. Is there an irony there or was it Almodovar's intention, given that the final point of the film is all to do with poor editing of the director's last film?

I hadn't seen an Almodovar film for over 20 years. I know, I missed loads and I'm trying to remember why I stopped wanting to go to them. Maybe it's because he does just talk about himself too much: that period when he was expressing all the unconventional sides of his personality which made films like 'The law of desire' so powerful had become almost boring by 'High heels'.

Ultimately, I didn't care about any of the characters; and I was looking at my watch with half an hour to go. Not a great advertisement for a film, I'm afraid. Or was I just hungry for my dinner?

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Bea says: Hear, hear. "All About My Mother" was the last Almodovar film I saw, and although I enjoyed it at the time it wasn't memorable. I liked the slow unravelling/untangling of the story in this film, although I could guess a lot of what was about to happen. I also liked the beautiful colours of the character's flats and the striking black beach of the island the protagonists visit - it is a beautiful film to watch. There is some interesting depth to the film - we talked a while afterward trying to tease out what Almodovar might have been trying to say. But boringly like Cecil, I didn't like the film-within-a-film plot, or the length - perhaps Cecil and I made a mistake going to see this before rather than after dinner! I won't be in a rush to see another Almodovar, but I wouldn't object either.
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