Broken Embraces

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

(R)

***

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A blind film director recalls the film—and woman—that ended his career.

Pedro Almodóvar’s new film is a sad and funny “love letter to the movies,” said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), a once-famous film director who has gone blind, encounters a figure from his past. As we flash back to Harry’s foolish dalliance with the movie-star mistress of a wealthy producer and the making of his ill-fated final film, Broken Embraces shows off Almodóvar’s ability “to play games, thicken textures, keep us enthralled by keeping us guessing.” But Almodóvar’s film is as much about look as it is about plot, said Anthony Lane in The New Yorker. Bright, bold reds and “images crisp as apples” create a sensual splendor epitomized by the “ravishing” Penélope Cruz. A longtime Almodóvar muse, Cruz is “more worshipped than ever” by his camera. But as the love interest here, she’s disappointingly chilly. That chill you feel may be the tinge of Harry’s regret, said Keith Phipps in The Onion. Because we know that he can no longer see, the rich visual textures of his memories come to seem mere melancholy reminders of “the pain of yesterday’s irretrievable pleasure.”