Dolor y Gloria (2019)

Directed by: Pedro Almodovar | 113 minutes | drama | Actors: Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Cecilia Roth, Asier Etxeandia, Raúl Arévalo, Nora Navas, Julieta Serrano, Rosalía, Eva Martín, Julián López, Agustín Almodóvar

After a single flip (‘Los amantes pasajeros’), Pedro Almodóvar is back on his life path with films like ‘Julieta’ and this one: making love to the viewer visually. Film should feel like a summer breeze, these are Almodóvar’s own words. Pace and urgency are slightly less than in its heyday, there is plenty to enjoy in ‘Dolor y Gloria’ – so autobiographical that you could call the film a sentimental journey.

The character Salvador Mallo (almost an anagram) is plagued by physical pains and depression. Mallo no longer writes and films and the love seems like something from the past. A reissue of a thirty-year-old classic brings life to the brewery. Mallo even seeks out the protagonist he’s been wrangling with, and something of a friendship is born that’s celebrated with heroin. In the future, the old filmmaker manages his back pains with it.

But what a find by Almodóvar to have himself played by Antonio Banderas, also a resident actor thirty years ago; which in turn is translated into the character Alberto Crespo (Asier Etxeandia). Fact and fiction are deliberately mixed, because the life filmed here is about films, films that depict the absurd role-playing of life. However, Almodóvar never makes things like this too complicated: he slides panels and beckons the viewer in, kaleidoscopic and colorful.

Running through the story are a meeting with an old lover (Leonardo Sbaraglia), an assistant who takes care of him (Nora Navas), and flashbacks of little Salvador and his slavish mother, played by Penélope Cruz. Sometimes it is a bit unbalanced and that makes the film feel a bit long, but then you are already attached to the sixties, lovingly interpreted by Banderas, who looks back. At the end, a shot of Salvador filming the last scene of this film – Almodóvar’s Droste effect; he himself is invisible and everywhere.