4 stars out of 5
When I was a college boy, Pedro Almodóvar was a big deal: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (which I’m pretty sure I didn’t see) and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (which I’m pretty sure I did). And yet I can’t say I’ve really kept up with his career in the many, many, many years since. I likely would’ve let Pain and Glory slip by too, until my friend Cecilia mentioned that she loved it. So I went to the theater, and annoyingly told the kid behind the counter, “You know, if this was a TV show, it would be PAYNE and GLORIE and they’d be mismatched crimefighters.”
I’ve definitely kept up with Almodóvar’s longtime muy guapo leading man Antonio Banderas. (Yes, I just paused from typing to swipe a big Z in the air.) He’s the star here, in a perhaps autobiographical — but I already did that Z thing so I’m not going to now stop and read Almodóvar’s Wikipedia page — story of a film director whose… um… glory days were 30 years ago. Reuniting with his star actor from back then causes Banderas to reflect on pain from the past, and create some fresh pain as well.
We also get possibly autobiographical flashbacks to the director’s childhood, in which Penelope Cruz is his mom. Two things:
A) Goodness gracious, she is ageless! Wow.
B) So many movies that I see are father-son stories, that it was really refreshing here to see a mother-son tale.
While it initially seemed this film was a collection of moments — snapshots from a life — the power and cohesiveness of the film truly snuck up on me. Family, dreams, memories, creativity, addiction, sexuality, aging — it’s all in there. This Almodóvar guy knows what he’s doing! When it ended, I sat in my seat going, “Ohhhh!” If I had a vote in the Academy Awards’ Best International Film category, well, that would be totally irresponsible because I’ve only seen two of the nominated movies. But, hot take, Pain and Glory is better than Parasite.
Jack Silbert, curator