Acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar has certainly never been one to shy away from taboo or controversy over his long career. Now in his seventies, he turns inward with his latest and most blatantly autobiographical film. Like much of Almodóvar’s work, Pain and Glory is a film full of rich color and artful presentation, but it’s the journey and the performances that resonate long after it’s over. This is a story that cannot exist without the life of a remarkable artist, and cannot truly live without one remarkable performance.
Pain and Glory exists as a series of flashbacks and reunions, which culminate in the artist’s redemption and return to form. Antonio Banderas is at his career-best in the role of Salvador Mallo, an aging and pain-ridden Spanish film director and writer whose best work seems to be behind him. Haunted by perceived past failings and distraught over the physical limitations that prevent him from making further films, Salvador has become listless and depressed.
Through a series of events, Salvador reconnects with influential people from his past in person and in memory, and through them, begins to understand himself and his purpose in life with more clarity. Pain and Glory offers no monumental revelations or climactic confrontations as may be expected in an Oscar-nominated film, but instead chips away at Salvador through incremental discoveries until we know him as fully as one can know a character. Almodóvar does not sensationalize Salvador, and seems to come to terms with him in real-time, as we are.
Banderas is phenomenal in the lead. His soft-spoken, nearly broken approach captures both the physical and emotional pain Salvador lives with daily. He’s a haunted and conflicted man, and it reads all over his face and in his mannerisms. His eyes dart around to avoid contact as he responds in conversation with as few words as possible. That is unless he’s talking about his films.
With an equally wonderful supporting cast (led by Penélope Cruz and Asier Etxeandia), Pain and Glory impossibly paints a vividly expressive yet stoically reserved picture of an artist whose life is just getting started. It’s with great risk that artists reveal themselves like this, but as Almodóvar thrives, we benefit. Where there’s honesty there’s often beauty, and Pain and Glory has both in spades.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.