Movie Review - 'Broken Embraces'

Broken Embraces Starring Lluís Homar and Penelope Cruz Directed by Pedro Almodóvar Rated R

Almodóvar's Broken Embraces is a bit like a restaurant you've heard great things about that proves to be a little underwhelming. "The atmosphere's great and I loved the music they played," you'd tell your friends the next day, "but the main course was a little cold and the service wasn't very good." It could be an absorbing character story, the kind of thing we expect from Pedro Almodóvar after all these years, but its concerns are elsewhere. Honestly, I felt a little cheated by an underexplored plot and perhaps too strong a presence of authorship. The shame of it is that the nuts and bolts of this is a fantastic, original idea, but why Almodovar chose this style is hard to figure out. The story doesn't need to be served another way, and the style fits a different kind of story. Harry Caine is Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar), and the distinction between them is this: Blanco is a film director who used Caine, his alter ego, to write his screenplays. In 1994, Blanco was riding high and married to the love of his life, Lena (Penelope Cruz). But one night, an accident took his Lena and his eyesight, so Blanco became Harry Caine, the blind screenwriter. Some 14 years later, Caine is commissioned by another writer named Ray X to help him with a script about his deceased father, a film producer named Martel. Even sprawling narratives like this usually have some efficiency, and here's what Broken Embraces...uh...embraces. The film producer, Martel, once made a film with Mateo, who, of course, was a director. So now Mateo (as Caine) is writing a movie about someone he knew but in the interest of protecting his identity can't admit it. Oh, and while Mateo and Martel worked together, Mateo had an affair with Martel's girlfriend, who again to keep things somewhat simpler was Lena. The two timelines, 1994 and 2008, play out little by little, but they're the window dressing for Almodóvar's main push, which is evoking an almost Hitchockian darkly comic film noir. But with rare exceptions, Hitchcock movies were much more direct on the surface - even something like Vertigo, which Broken Embraces almost brings to mind - and to be sure, Hitch was always concerning himself with stylish filmmaking. It isn't that it doesn't work here, just that neither the beautiful production - bright colors, luscious soundtrack, the director's ongoing photographic love affair with his muse - or the film's detailed but slightly labored story really support one another the way they should. Homar is something of a discovery for American audiences, although he did have a good role in Almodóvar's Bad Education several years ago. He's something to watch, especially in the modern-day scenes where he's playing with a handicap and also a poker face because he knows secrets the other characters do not. Cruz, more than ever, has become an extremely brave and reliable leading lady, and nowhere is that more evident than her work with Almodóvar. She's as good as the character will allow here, and that has to do primarily with the trust she has in her director and vice versa. They've made excellent films together and not-so-great films together, but they've never thrown underhand. So, even if Broken Embraces doesn't measure up on some levels, I'd rather see Cruz in a so-so Pedro Almodóvar film than working with anyone else. Ultimately, Broken Embraces is an exercise in style, and on that basis, it's hard to argue against the great director's steady hand, but the story elements with which he's so commonly associated feel a little buried here, so this is more a film to look at than it is to watch.