An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Charlotte O'Sullivan's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Pedro Almodovar.
Cast: Jose Luis Gomez, Penelope Cruz, Lluis Homar, Blanca Portillo, Ruben Ochandiano, Tamar Novas, Angela Molina
Description: Blind scriptwriter Harry Caine lost his sight in a car crash on Lanzarote and subsequently changed his name from Mateo Blanco. When news arrives that producer Ernesto Martel has died, Harry is immediately transported back to the '90s and the set of his ill-fated comedy Girls And Suitcases, where he falls under the spell of aspiring actress Lena, who just happens to be Ernesto's girlfriend.
Country: SP. 2009. 127mins
Love on the rocks: Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar) and Lena (Penélope Cruz)
Pedro Almodóvar gives good head shots. True, Spain’s hippest and most prominently homosexual auteur is happy to ogle big breasts and pert bums.
But it is faces he frames with the greatest passion and, here, with muse Penélope Cruz dominating a story of erotic obsession, he surpasses himself.
Cruz famously bats her eyelashes for L’Oréal, but their stylists have never made her look this scrumptious.
What lies beneath? A typically labyrinthine plot weaves between the early Nineties and the present day.
Stricken secretary Lena (Cruz) allows herself to become the mistress of a wealthy old businessman, Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) then snatches at the chance of being the leading lady in a film called Girls and Suitcases.
All of a giddy whirl, she wears her hair à la Audrey Hepburn and also tries on a Marilyn wig, only to fall in love with the film’s director, Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar).
Back to the future, we discover that the businessman has recently died and that Mateo, now using the pseudonym Harry Caine, is blind and working as a scriptwriter.
He is looked after by his plain, no-nonsense agent Judith (Blanca Portillo) and her cute, agreeable son, Diego (Tamar Novas).
Then Ernesto’s deranged gay son shows up, determined to exorcise the demons of the past, and Judith breaks out in a cold sweat.
What happened to Lena? What happened to Girls and Suitcases, the “child” that Lena and Mateo gave birth to?
Girls and Suitcases is clearly based on Almodóvar’s own breakout hit, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Mateo, like Almodóvar, is a very “visual” director.
Numerous themes are explored in Broken Embraces (disability, abusive and/or negligent fathers) but its focus is the power of the moving image.
The images on display are certainly rich. Lena and Ernesto have sex beneath crisp white sheets in a pristine villa bedroom on a tropical isle. We can’t see their faces.
Their jerky moves feel like death throes and the climax to their love-making is a killing joke.
Cruz, it should be said, is perfectly suited to the material.
Rarely stretched in films, her talent has often been overlooked (she was excellent in Vanilla Sky but no one noticed). Her whirlwind, Oscar-winning turn in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona changed all that.
She deserves just as much acclaim for this multi-layered performance.
For all that, Lena doesn’t quite add up. One minute she’s gripped by the fate of her parents, the next by Mateo’s right to artistic freedom. (Her obsession with Girls and Suitcases is echoed by all the key characters. We get to see various versions of this film-within-a-film. In every incarnation, alas, I found it dull.)
Lena, ultimately, is a cipher. We’re supposed to mourn the fact that this madonna/whore is destroyed by the male gaze. Powerful men like looking at beautiful women; beautiful women like to be looked at; audiences sit back and watch the fireworks.
Film Trailers by Filmtrailer.com
We get it: we’re all voyeurs. But enough already with the titillating lecture. Dennis Potter, David Lynch, Brian De bleedin’ Palma... Just about every male director since the Eighties has made the same point.
Almodóvar wants to seem avant garde. His film is pretty old guard.
For all its sexy verve, it winds up feeling cold to the touch.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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