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BY BEN VERDI
For the Daily
Published February 21, 2010
The overwhelming dramatic silence of “Broken Embraces” makes it feel more like a play than a film, but it would work as a five-piece soap opera if it had cheesier lighting. While Pedro Almodóvar’s films (“Volver,” “Bad Education”) always feel geared toward an audience of filmmakers, “Broken Embraces” takes its director’s habit a bit too far.
"Broken Embraces"
at the Michigan
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Much like the arrogant director/writer around whom the plot is based, Almodóvar appears to have made this movie for himself. While many enjoy work engineered by a heavy-handed man at the helm, the director’s grip on the story feels slightly more constricting to our senses than necessary. When a minor character references Fellini’s “8 ½” in a simple, throw-away line, it feels as if Almodóvar just couldn’t help himself as the director of a film about a director. There is brilliant directorial work in there, but Almodóvar makes sure we don’t miss any of it.
That said, Penelope Cruz (“Volver”) absolutely shines. She plays a struggling secretary for whom we initially feel very sympathetic but over time we grow to desire, however ominous loving her may seem. By the end we’re as haunted by the memory of her glowing face as the film’s main male character, Mateo Blanco, who signs his name “Harry Caine” on his screenplays.
In a sense, we make the same decisions that characters in the story make when it comes to our ability to control our feelings for her: We let her get away with more than we probably should, but not because we (the film's other characters included) are weak. There's something about the way she kisses us through the screen that carries the story and the entire film, despite her noted absence for more than half of it.
Outside of Cruz’s pure power, the film is paced very well. It refuses to rush, despite a somewhat predictable ending, and makes sure it leaves no stone unturned. And there are quite a few stones. The only area where the film seems to drag occurs roughly two thirds of the way through. This single lull is an example of how the film is a victim of its own effective pacing, because — up until this point — we have been trained to expect scenes from the past to last only so long before we’re thrust back into the murky present. Yet this last flashback takes 30 minutes because it bridges the gap between past and present. It makes sense, and perhaps it’s not meant to be anticipated, but it's almost as unsettling as it is potent.
The film defies quick classification because of the director's ambition. This is not to say that films must fit into a formulaic mold to be assessed value within a certain genre. But the narrative awkwardly bounces between that of a story-told-out-of-order like “Memento” to a complex love-triangle to a confession about the relationships between fathers and sons to a near satire of actors and the film industry itself to the story of how a blind man went blind. If there were less, it would all mean more.
It’s as if Pedro Almodóvar — with the creation of this film — wants his name synonymous with its own genre, a genre that, due to his unquestionable talent and ambition, he wants packed full of every dramatic tension known to man.
