Cannes. "Broken Embraces"

By David Hudson on 05/19/2009

[Updated through 5/21]

"Pedro Almódovar offers nothing new in his latest feature, 'Abrazos Rotos' ('Broken Embraces' [site]), but that's probably enough for his devout followers," assumes Eric Kohn in indieWIRE. "With solid performances and a script that's never too hard on the ears, Spain's superstar director merely repeats the themes and conflicts of his greatest hits. With secretive family issues, tortured artists, melodramatic events and slight humor all in play, Almodovar dutifully plays to his base."

"Despite its rich, vivid palette, 'Broken Embraces' feels like Almodóvar's take on noir dramas of the 40s and 50s," writes the Telegraph's David Gritten. "Set in Madrid, it concerns Mateo (Lluís Homar), a former film director now blinded and turned screenwriter. He is trying to piece together a tragic episode in his past: his doomed love affair with Lena (Penélope Cruz), a would-be actress and the mistress of Martel (José Luis Gómez), a domineering millionaire. On the pretence of producing a 'making of' documentary about the film in which Lena is starring for Mateo, the jealous Martel tracks the lovers' every move. This premise is too convoluted for its own good, a charge that could also be leveled at Almodovar's last disappointing film, 2004's 'Bad Education.' He seems so intent on jamming as many elements as possible into his story that his characters lack dimension."

"[T]he pretty segments inserted into the narrative segments in 'Abrazos Rotos' would be just as good in color pencil storyboards, and have nothing to do with the texture or movement, unique to movies, that Almodóvar likes to talk about in interviews," writes David Phelps in The Auteurs' Notebook. "Almodóvar's too tasteful for Rossellini's realism and he's too tasteful for Sirk's melodrama - both hurt, follow people who keep themselves from loving. 'Abrazos Rotos' simply uses old screenwriter's devices to keep lovers from one another."

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw finds this one to be "a richly enjoyable piece of work, slick and sleek, with a sensuous feel for the cinematic surfaces of things and, as ever, self-reflexively infatuated with the business of cinema itself. Yet I wonder if Almodóvar isn't in danger of retreading old ideas. It doesn't quite match the heartfelt power of his 2006 Cannes film festival contender, 'Volver'; 'Broken Embraces' is always conspicuously concerned with passion, but without being itself fully passionate."

"The rich and satisfying tropes often found in Pedro Almodóvar's films - passion, betrayal, lust, and... Penélope Cruz, lots of Penélope Cruz - are on display in his latest," writes David Bourgeois, who reports on the press conference for Movieline.

Earlier: Reviews from Spain, where the film opened in March. That's where you'll find the trades' takes.

Updates: "'Broken Embraces' is a gabfest, loquacious even by the director's own admittedly wordy standards," writes the Boston Globe's Wesley Morris. "Melodrama talks its way into a thriller then back to melodrama then into not-terribly-funny comedy. Redefining the limits and rules of genres has always interested the Spaniard. But now 'Almódovar' is its own genre - it's several, in fact - and suddenly the director seems boxed in by himself.... 'Broken Embraces' is essentially a nostalgia trip to the 1990s, Almodovar's early-middle period. But why? These are the years that brought us 'Tie Me, Tie Me Down!,' 'High Heels' and 'Kika': emotionally and sexually callow movies (in the new film, the gays are a joke). They were hungry for sensation, devoid of the daring of his early years and in need of the narrative, visual beauty of his most recent run."

"It's a tribute to Almodóvar's careful scripting and the skills of Cruz and the rest of the cast that this intricate fusion of disparate elements hangs together as well as it does," writes Nick Funnell in Time Out London. "It's easy to forgive its improbabilities and misfires and just succumb to its artful flow of constantly resonating moments, which sends the brain ping-ponging in all directions. But despite all the passion and tragedy, it doesn't resonate like a 'Talk to Her' or a 'Volver.'"

"Certainly, it is unmistakably an Almodóvar film," writes Wendy Ide in the London Times. "Nobody else does richly-textured melodrama quite like him; nobody else can encourage such overwrought performances without unbalancing the film; nobody else shoots Penelope Cruz with a reverence which borders on fan-worship. But what's missing here is the warmth and emotional honesty that infuses Almodóvar's most successful features. What's missing is, arguably, Almodóvar himself."

Cannes has video and audio from the press conference.

Update, 5/20: "The whole thing is like some deluxe ice-cream sundae, crowned with whipped cream and decorated with cherries," writes the Guardian's Xan Brooks. "It looks glorious, tastes delicious, and melts away in the midday sun."

"[T]his often wonderful but not inexhaustible filmmaker is bumping up once again against the law of diminishing returns," writes Tom Carson at GQ. "About all that he seems genuinely smitten with in this movie is Penélope Cruz - not the character she plays, but her. So he's happy to give Cruz the best comedy bits and photograph her looking gorgeous, two things that tend to happen simultaneously. But the fact that what glow 'Broken Embraces' has defines it as a movie from Cruz's still developing career rather than Pedro's midlife one can't help but make you wonder if she'll turn his next script down. Come to think of it, that might be good for him, too."

Update, 5/21: "Coming immediately after 'Volver' - to my mind, the most deeply felt and oddly moving picture he's ever made - it's especially disappointing," finds Mike D'Angelo at the AV Club. "With that film, he seemed to have found an ideal balance between the overripe melodrama of his early work and his more contemplative (often a little too contemplative) 'mature' period; I was looking eagerly forward to a series of late-career masterworks that would find the melancholy within the absurd, and vice versa. Maybe they're still forthcoming, but 'Broken Embraces' is strictly marking time."

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 2009.

[Photo: "Broken Embraces," Sony Pictures Classics, 2009]

Tags: Cannes 2009, Pedro Almodóvar, Penélope Cruz, Spanish Cinema