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The box describes Broken Embraces as an "acclaimed tale of sex, secrets and cinema," which makes me go, "Uh-oh." Pedro Almodóvar reliably delivers heady blends of glamour, melodrama, and emotional turmoil, but such stuff still runs hot and cold from movie to movie. So although I liked his Bad Education, a film that was all about "sex, secrets and cinema," the prospect of Almodóvar returning to the tortured-filmmaker well filled me with trepidation. Maybe I was predisposed to react poorly, then, but Broken Embraces turned out to be pretty pedestrian, a verbose connect-the-dots melodrama bolstered by some half-formed ideas about artists, muses, and the power of the moving image.
Broken Embraces is mainly the story of Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), a blind screenwriter leading his second life. Fourteen years ago, as we see in flashback, he was Mateo Blanco, an acclaimed, sighted film director working on his first comedy, starring his new discovery and lover, Magdalena (or Lena, played by Penélope Cruz). Unfortunately for Harry, his muse was also the mistress of wealthy industrialist Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez), which severely complicated their relationship and resulted in the utter bastardization of their film. It all has something to do with his blindness, too, but that part is explained (much) later.
The love triangle is a classic cinematic construct, of course, but Almodóvar awkwardly shoehorns a few more characters into this plot. Judit Garcia (Blanco Portillo) is Harry/Mateo's manager, while her son Diego (Tamar Novas) is his assistant and co-writer. Ray X (Rubén Ochandiano) is the mysterious visitor who shows up on Harry's doorstep with a complicated backstory and a fourteen-year-old documentary in tow. Magdalena's mother and cancer-stricken father drift abruptly in and out of the story, as does a madam for whom Lena has done occasional work as a high-end call girl.
Almodóvar isn't exactly a character here, but the film does explicitly reference his early fame at the helm of a certain candy-coloured, femme-focused melodrama. Where Bad Education's movie-within-a-movie had the dangerous momentum of a story willing itself into existence, the bits we see of Broken Embraces' film-within-a-film, called Girls and Suitcases, are simply hilarious, bolstered by a confident comic performance from Carmen Machi as a sex addict saddled with a suitcase loaded with cocaine. The look of this production is startlingly specific, especially in the sense of time and place that it conveys; and I enjoyed Almodóvar's nod to the film editor's ability to make or break any given scene--or all of them. One wonders if he's ever had a movie wrecked by a vengeful producer working in concert with a malevolent cutter. To the film's larger point, maybe Almodóvar feels like he, too, is leading a second life as an artist, long separated from wacky earlier works that seem, perhaps, more superficial to him now. Whatever the case, his ability to fluidly channel his younger, breezier self is honestly breathtaking, not the least because Broken Embraces compares poorly in important ways.
For starters, much of Broken Embraces is flat-out boring. It's disappointingly verbal in its storytelling, its narrative twists and turns playing out not in the action on screen but in line after line of expository dialogue. The third act, in particular, is just incredibly talky, a problem not only because the revelations come fast and furious but also because most of them have been telegraphed well in advance. Almodóvar plants elements in the present-day story to be explored and explained through flashbacks, but none of the people we're watching are interesting enough to lend the film's thriller elements any heft. By the time Almodóvar reaches his melancholy endgame, which has Harry/Mateo reliving one final, happy moment in a still-frame of video twinkling with noise and digital artifacts, all those deliberately deployed but clichéd cinematic tropes have sapped too much energy from the melodrama.
Almost everyone in Broken Embraces is a familiar character type, from the visionary, sexually potent film director to the aging businessman engaged in a lopsided sexual relationship with a younger woman. Judit is an intriguing presence, and it turns out that she has one hell of a backstory, finally to be revealed in a scene where her lips are loosened by just enough gin-and-tonics (hold the tonic) to let fly. Yet we're not permitted to see what the character does, only to hear her talk about it after the fact. It's frustrating because it breaks that simple dictum of show-don't-tell, and because Portillo (she's a real Almodóvar type, though her only previous experience with him was on Volver) gives perhaps the most nuanced performance in the film but seems, consequently, squandered.
That observation brings me to the star of the show, Penélope Cruz. I have nothing bad to say about her; she has an almost comically expressive face, and she does stoic and sexy equally well. As Almodóvar's current muse, she's used here in part as a vessel for his visual imagination, including some of the film's riffs on cinema history. At one point he re-imagines her with a ridiculous platinum-blonde wig and at another with sensible bangs, as a Spanish-accented Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, respectively. Other times, he's heaping such abuse on Lena, both sexual and purely physical, that Cruz's role becomes strictly reactive. Regardless, the film perks up tremendously whenever she's on screen, which made me wish Broken Embraces didn't take so long to get to her section of the story.
Because Cruz is an actress playing an actress, whenever she turns up, the film becomes somewhat reflexive. To complain of Almodóvar's reduction of her to a paper doll is, perhaps, to minimize a more subtle point in the film itself. In either aspect of her dual role--as actress and kept woman--Lena functions as a fulfillment of male fantasy. Critics have compared Broken Embraces to film noir, but Sirkian melodrama may be a more apt reference, with Lena's suffering at the heart of the story. Is the real tragedy that Mateo Blanco had his film ruined and lost his sight? Or is it that poor Magdalena, desperate at first for money and later simply to make something of herself, never achieved the independence or acclaim she so desired?
Also, because Almodóvar is directing an actor portraying a director, it's hard not to read the film as some kind of statement about filmmaking. Though I don't see an argument that either Mateo or his newly-blind alter ego, Harry, is a direct surrogate for Almodóvar, the filmmaker--now in his 60s!--may be feeling his age and reflecting on how unexpectedly clean a departure he's made from the early, farcical material that used to be his lifeblood. Truth be told, the way he uses the Girls and Suitcases segment feels a little snotty, as though the director of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is putting his audience on notice that he could do that sort of ostensibly insubstantial work again, that it would be easy, if only he weren't busy making ever-grander statements.
Broken Embraces deals with laudably mature themes, among them a recognition that l'amour fou is sometimes just fou, and that one of the most important attributes a man can have is the capacity for forgiveness, because it allows him to start again. But all the colourful poetry Almodóvar and ace cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto bring to bear on its imagery can't compensate for cardboard-cutout characters, hoary plot twists, and trite observations on sex and death. And not even direct shout-outs to Sirk, Dassin, or Michael Powell's proto-slasher film Peeping Tom can render this movie's complex, scattered subtext about film, video, memory, and the poignancy of images compelling or coherent.
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Sony's Blu-ray transfer of Broken Embraces, letterboxed at 2.35:1, is truly a thing of beauty. When digital-intermediate technology arrived on the scene ten years ago, the inferior widescreen format known as "Super 35" got a new lease on life because an optical blow-up was no longer required to upsize the smaller negative image for theatrical release on anamorphic prints. But the HD version of Broken Embraces offers compelling testimony that real Panavision cinematography has some life in it yet. As good as most of the BDs I watch these days are, the depth and complexity of the imagery depicted herein can be startling. Some of Prieto's photography is in slightly soft focus, and I occasionally noted what appeared to be a barely clipped highlight, but I never detected anything that suggested a deviation from the intended look of the film. The presentation excels at conveying rich hues that dawdle way down in the toe of the image. In the scene near the film's end where Diego, Harry, and Judit gather over drinks and divulged secrets, the palette is dominated by a deepening storm of blues, reds, purples, and greens. It's magnificent stuff. Owing to a reserved mix--think mostly front-and-centre dialogue scenes with some deviations to the surrounds (for ambient sounds) and occasional forays into the low-frequency effects channel (mainly for music)--there's less to say about the Spanish-language 5.1 DTS-HD MA audio.
The disc is a bit light on special features, but some of what's on board is well worth a look even if it's a little weirdly arranged. The best news is that you can see more of the careful pastiche that is Girls and Suitcases, though you have to jump through a hoop to do it. First, go to the section of deleted scenes (collectively running 12 minutes, there are three in total, all in HD) and click on "Continuation of Girls and Suitcases" (4 mins.). Afterwards, skip over to The Cannibalistic Councillor (8 mins.): billed as an Almodóvar short, it picks up where the deleted scene I just told you to watch leaves off. The Cannibalistic Councillor is only in standard-def, alas, but it features Machi delivering a highly amusing cocaine-snorting, creme-caramel-consuming monologue on sex and politics. From there, you can go back and view the other elisions--such as a very weird night-vision scene set in a restaurant where dining in pitch-blackness simulates blindness--and then get a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at what directors really do for a living, as "Pedro Directs Penélope" (6 mins., SD) while watching a video tap from the camera and jabbering at her about what she's supposed to be thinking as she says her lines. It's fascinating stuff, depicting the dual tracks that Cruz works on as she processes Almodóvar's directions simultaneously with the delivery of her lines, in addition to dismantling some widely-held ideas about the nature of naturalistic, spontaneous performances. (It's a fitting extra feature for a film that itself pays tribute to the power of the editor.)
Safely skip the rest of the bonus features, including "On the Red Carpet: The New York Film Festival Closing Night" (3 mins.), a drab short cobbled together from oh-so-brief red-carpet interviews with Cruz, Almodóvar, and Richard Peña--a familiar figure to New York film buffs as the director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center--and really dreadful-looking clips from the film itself. The interviews are in HiDef, but said clips are in some botched, jittery sub-VHS resolution that wouldn't even look good on your iPhone. Finally, there's the "VARIETY Q&A with Penélope Cruz" (6 mins.), which intercuts excerpts from a Cruz interview with upconverted footage from the film. The audio is frankly terrible--it has a whirring digital edge that sounds like the result of aggressive noise-reduction. At any rate, the Q&A is most notable for having been conducted by VARIETY's well-known and well-liked chief film critic, Todd McCarthy, who was unceremoniously canned by that publication just a week before this disc's release.
No commentary track? No problem. I'm not sure I'd want to listen.
The disc is filled out with a trailer for Broken Embraces that makes the film look slightly more dour and self-serious than it actually is, plus a complement of mostly unrelated trailers for An Education, Coco Before Chanel, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Volver, Rachel Getting Married, Frozen River, Adoration, "Breaking Bad", The Damned United, and that damned "Blu-ray Disc is High Definition" clip reel you've seen at the front of nearly every disc thus far put out by the Sony Pictures dream factory. Also like all of Sony's releases, the platter is BD-Live-enabled, but the connectivity offers no film-specific extras.-Bryant Frazer
© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.
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DVD GRADES:
Image A
Sound B
Extras B |
DVD VITALS:
Running Time
128 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.35:1 (1080p/MPEG-4)
Languages
Spanish DTS-HD MA 5.1,
French DD 5.1
Subtitles
English, English SDH, French
BD-50
Sony
Buy BROKEN EMBRACES posters at Moviegoods (click on image)
Published: March 18, 2010
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