Broken Embraces film review - Penelope Cruz
Penelope Cruz and Pedro Almodovar open Film4's outdoor season at Somerset House with the premiere of a film about a film starring a film-maker, where the key emotional drama isn’t the relationship, but cinema itself
31 July 2009
video
Rating: 3/5
Cert: 15, 128 mins
Starring: Penelope Cruz, Lluís Homar
THE weather didn’t disappoint for the opening of Film4’s Somerset House outdoor movie season - and neither did Penelope Cruz in the UK premiere of Broken Embraces.
A girl for all seasons if ever there was one, she follows up her Oscar-winning scene-stealer in Vicky Cristina Barcelona by going back to her roots: muse-in-chief of Spanish master Pedro Almodovar.
Here, her one role feels like several: as Lena, the mistress of a domineering millionaire, also having a doomed affair with a film-maker, she's forever shape-shifting into what’s required for each real-life role.
But as she’s also the erratic star - Hepburn one minute, Hilton the next - of a Spanish melodrama that the film-maker is making and the millionaire financing, you feel out of breath just trying to keep up.
And she’s all the better when you consider the convoluted plot she has to work under: an errant son making a documentary about them; the story told in flashback from various narrators; a film-maker who 'becomes' his pseudonym. It’s never less than entertaining, but it’s self-reflection as far as the eye can see.
Almodovar has always been a film-maker who makes films about films - semi-remakes, reimaginings, riffs on riffs. But a film about film starring a film-maker, where the key emotional drama isn’t actually the relationship, but cinema itself? It might be a step too far.
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