Pedro Almodovar can sometimes be overly flamboyant if not out-and-out nuts — let us never talk about I’m So Excited! ever again — but his latest film, Pain and Glory, is wonderfully restrained and all the better for it. Partly autobiographical, it’s about ageing, and the reckoning that always comes with that — when you know you’ve had most of your life, how do you keep living it? — as told with the kind of humanity and sympathy and generosity you don’t ever see in a Tarantino film, say. (Are we still arguing about the Tarantino film or have we moved on?)
The film stars Antonio Banderas as Salvador Mallo, who is clearly meant to represent Almodovar, now approaching 70, at some level. Salvador is a famous filmmaker who has not written or directed anything for quite a while now. He is afflicted by physical ailments — a bad back; migraines; a choking syndrome — as well as mental ones, including depression and insomnia. He is on every type of pill. His suffers both physically and existentially. He does not imagine he will ever surmount his creative crisis, make another film, taste success again. The pain is wholly present but the glory? Yesterday’s news. None of this is ever spelled out but it’s all in Banderas’s sensitive, nuanced performance. It’s as if he’s somehow managed to dim the light in his own eyes.
Salvador is living a life of self-imposed seclusion. He has money and a housekeeper and the most terrific apartment. If you are into iconic 1960s pieces, as I am, you will be entirely transfixed. At one point he stands in front of a Vitra wall-organiser and I was quite annoyed I couldn’t see it properly. (Out of the way, Salvador, out of the way!) The apartment is also eye-poppingly colourful.
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