Early on inPain and Glory, an old acquaintance asks Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), a movie director who has essentially retired himself in late middle age, If you dont write or film, what will you do?
Live, I guess, he replies, with a whole-body shrug so resigned its clear he means almost exactly the opposite.
There may be more pain than glory running throughPedro Almodovars minor-key melodrama, but its the most tender kind; a sort of melancholy memory palace that paints the Spanish auteurs personal history in gently over-washed layers of past and present not least in the fact that it stars two of the most famous muses of his nearly-four decade career, Banderas andPenelope Cruz(who appears in flashbacks as Mallos prickly, beloved mother).
Manolo Pavón/Sony Pictures Classics
Salvador, we soon learn, was once the king of a certain kind of sexy Andalusian excess, a filmmaker beloved for cult cinema likeSabor, whose revival occasions a reunion with its erstwhile star Alberto (Asier Etxeandia), from whom hes been estranged for more than 20 years.
For nearly all of that time, Alberto has also been a high-functioning heroin addict; learning that, Salvador, locked in a low-grade depression and racked by various chronic ailments, sees an opportunity: Why couldnt he just try some too, medicinally?
As the story moves between Salvadors dream-like childhood much of it spent at the side of his chronically dissatisfied mother (Cruz) in a rural Spanish village and his gilded but narrow life in Madrid, a portrait emerges of a man who has lost his way, if not his will to even wake up every day.
But one, too, who cant seem to entirely turn away from his directors eye, whether hes gazing at a drug deal gone wrong or a faded watercolor on a gallery wall.
On a visit to Salvadors cloistered apartment, Alberto finds a draft of an old story and begs to turn it into a one-man play; the production of that project leads to another kind of reunion, and more backward glances, which mostly sums up what passes for plot inPain and Glorys impressionistic, gently meandering journey.
If the movies inward gaze feels too blinkered sometimes, a sort of depressive reflexive autofiction, its also mitigated by the inimitable imprint of its creator a man who still finds moments of singular beauty and sideways humor even in the midst of his very Almodovar-esque despair.
Its also hard to imagine the film without Banderas at its center; his Cannes-winning performance isnt Almodovar drag, exactly, though he does borrow some of his mannerisms and particular flair for wardrobe; its both a fond tribute and its own layered creation, etched in every well-earned line on the actors still obscenely handsome face.
(The lesser-known to American audiences at least Etxeandia and Leonardo Sbaraglia are fantastically vivid in their smaller turns, too.)
In the scheme of Almodovars rich catalogue,Painis probably too small, too sad, and too obtuse to really recommend as any kind of starting point.
For longtime fans, though, its a gift; the kind of quiet glory worth waiting a few decades for.B+
(Pain and Glorydebuted at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals, and will be in limited theatrical release beginning Oct.
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