Salvador Mallo, the director and lead character in Pain and Glory, tells one of his actors that holding back tears in emotional scenes instead of crying makes actors better. Yet Pedro Almodóvar, who wrote and directed and based this film partially on his life, does not. He goes deep, he explores honestly and elicits a deeply emotional and cathartic reaction.
In this thesis on his life and his work, he finds the generous space to include many of his collaborators in front and behind the camera. On screen we have Antonio Banderas as Mallo, Cecilia Roth, from All About My Mother (1999), appears as an actress from Mallo’s past who’s eager to work with him again. And most poignantly Peneope Cruz, his muse of many years and movies, plays a version of his mother...
Pain and Glory is first and foremost about cinema. Any movie lover would swoon when Mallo recalls the movies of his childhood as smelling like summer breeze, like the beach, like hot piss. The smells he remembers from his childhood local cinema. It’s also about cinema as an addiction. Once we fall into its spell, can we ever quit it? Can we survive its deep and demanding love?
Almodóvar gives us his ideas about actors, about creating art, about cinema and most touchingly about love. Queer love in particular. What it means to love and lose, to grow together and apart. The scenes where Mallo reconnects with his ex Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia) provide a catharsis not just for Almodóvar, but for queer people who loved and grew up with his work for decades. In looking back together, us and him, we cherish the beautiful memories and enduring bond that Salvador and Federico have. We have it with Almodóvar and his movies.
The bond with mothers is a theme that Almodóvar has explored many times and from different angles. Of course he would not have denied us further examination of that in this; his most sincere interrogation of all the things that matter to him. Cruz and Julietta Serrano play two versions of Jacinta, Mallo’s mother. One idealized, the other brittle. In trying to reconcile the two versions, Almodóvar arrives at one that’s tragic but healing. He exhumes the ghost to find the lovely memories that make it.
In what might be his best performance ever, Banderas does not mimic the Almodóvar that we know and love. He has the spiky graying hair, wears the colorful shirts yet it’s not an exacting imitation. Rather it's Banderas’ interpretation, his homage, his idea of his long time friend and collaborator. Though at a few times the impression becomes uncanny. Every once in a while, he’d make a gesture or stress a certain word and I’d gasp with recognition. Pedro is on screen looking like Antonio. Perfect fusion of artist, muse and subject.
Grade: A