By Linda Winsh-Bolard
It opens with shots of Penelope Cruz and her film partner as they are getting ready for the film shoot. Director Almondovar said that the shot were taken without the actors’ knowledge.
So, if you have ethical problems with actors being used for directorial promotion, this is not a film for you. It also is not for you, if you are looking for logical resolutions (the end is beyond believable) or simple story plot.
But if you like Almondovar and his particular filmic vision, odd, surprising and somehow just there to aid the complexity of personal relationships at various times, the use of film footage within film story and highly melodramatic revenges, than you’d be satisfied.
Harry Caine (Lluís Homar) used t be a film director before he was blinded in a car accident. He gave up directing and changed his name; he became screenplay writer Mateo Blanco. He works with the help of his former producer, Judit (Blanca Portillo), Blanca’s son Diego (Tamar Novas) desires also to work with Mateo. They become friends and star writing a comedy.
Then they find out that the producer of Caine’s film Girls with Suitcases, Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez), died; later a man calling himself Ray X (Ruben Ochandiano) shows up asking for help with a screenplay about an indifferent father; his daddy was Ernesto Martel.
Flashback to 1992. Martel fell in love with Lena (Penelope Cruz) who wanted to become an actress (the scene where she admits her ambition is quite nice). Lena auditioned for a part tin Girls with Suitcases and Mateo fell in love with her as well.
Furious Martel used his son, Ernest Junior, to tape the affair as a part of documentary film.
If you find all this somewhat confusing, then consider that this is only the bare bones and that by the time will all unravel you’d surprised repeatedly.
It is brutally comical( I cannot leave Ernesto, he promised me that you can shoot the film…), lover’s talk translated in detached manner of the hearing impaired, film noire influences with stairs, camera angles, close-ups and general claustrophobia of doom, but garish Madrid is not Sunset Boulevard and Penelope Cruz is not Ingrid Bergman. Hues and shades of brash color contrast with bleak volcanic seaside. Romance of the past with film footage. It is beautifully shot, rich and interesting imagery of full fledged director-cameraman cooperation, but it’s caught between genres. The uneven grasping highlights structural weaknesses of the plot.
Almondovar is for Penelope Cruz what Woody Allen was for Mia Farrow and Tom Cruise for Nicole Kidman. Here Cruz portrays two opposite parts in Girls with Suitcases, Magdalena and Pina, as well as Lena. Not an easy task, Lena is trapped somewhere between unhappy wife of a rich man and a gold digger- after all, she wanted the career he provided, just did not count on the harsh control he wields over her (and murderous fury). Add to that inconsistent part resembling Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown laden with costumes and wigs, and I am not sure if it is the actress or the audience who is more confused. It becomes coldly rendered role. Calm and stoic Mateo remain equally detached. The episodic parts are often nicely sarcastic but don’t really influence the main story.
Watch it as a visual tapestry, that’s very pleasant and does not bring out disquieting questions such as: is it really possible to hide all these things today, or what is it exactly that drives these people and why.
Camera: Rodrigo Prieto; editor: Jose Salcedo; music: Alberto Iglesias; art director: Antxon Gomez, sound: Miguel Rejas. Running time: 128 MIN.
