NYFF 2009: Broken Embraces

A film noir, suspense thriller that quickly descends into melodrama, Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, Broken Embraces, exists as both a vehicle for Penélope Cruz and homage to cinema itself

Pedro Almodóvar / Spain / 2009 / 128m

Less emotionally intact than 2006’s Volver, Broken Embraces is more concerned with creating a lasting impression. Pedro Almodóvar structures his film through frequent flashbacks and casts the classically beautiful Penélope Cruz as the love interest of both a wealthy businessman and a film director. She has a screen presence that is eerily similar to Audrey Hepburn in Billy Wilder’s Sabrina, exuding splendor and confidence. Almodóvar has not lost his sense for color, giving the film a kaleidoscopic quality – easily his most visually ravishing. The film is also his longest; the third act is when the viewers’ interests begin to wane, as it is bogged down by melodrama of the tedious sort. Broken Embraces is obsessed with image and cinema, the power of both and how they shape and affect people, but it also turns out to be Almodóvar’s least emotionally resonant.

Harry Caine is a screenwriter who was in an accident that left him blind, an accident that left his original self dead. Mateo Blanco, is original self, was a film director. Magdalena “Lena” Rivero’s dream is to become an actress, but she settles as being a secretary and sometimes call girl when she realizes her dreams will never be realized. Ernesto Martel, a rich financier, is her boss. One night, in an attempt for find work at her call girl job, she receives a phone call from him. He falls in love with her, and they live together for two years. At this time, Mateo has written a script called “Girls and Suitcases” (a near replication of his Almodóvar’s own 1988 masterpiece Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) and is looking to cast the part of Pina. Enter Lena, who is introduced to Mateo by Ernesto’s homosexual son Ernesto Martel Junio. She auditions for him; he falls in love with her. The story of the film is told by Caine, who finds out that Ernesto Martel has died in the first scene and then is visited by his son, Ernesto Martel Jr., who now calls himself Ray X and wants to make a film about him and his father’s life.

The third act crumbles when Judit, Mateo’s production manager and now Harry’s personal assistant, reveals the truth about what happened when Lena and he ran away to Lanzarote so she could escape the wrath of Ernesto, who had already injured her in previous instances. The only positive aspect of the end of the film is that it provides the audience with one evocative image, which is almost directly lifted from Godard’s Prénom Carmen. Harry, now going by the name Mateo since he decided to re-edit Girls and Suitcases, tells Diego, Judit’s son, to put on Elevator to the Gallows, only to find out that the making-of documentary that Ernesto Jr. was told to make by his father is in the DVD player already. Mateo asks Diego what is happening onscreen. Diego tells him that he and Lena are sharing a kiss as they are stopped at a roundabout. Mateo puts his hands up on the screen. The camera closes in to one on the blue, static television screen. It’s the clearest image of the film, Almodóvar being able to convey exactly what he wants to successfully – that of a blind man attempting to grasp an image that is forever lost.

The scene in which Mateo and Lena go away to Lanzarote recalls the Pompeii scene in Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy. The sea and mountains are gorgeously shot by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, as Cat Power plays softly in the background. José Salcedo’s editing ties the narrative of the film together quite well. Alberto Iglesias’ score matches the texture of the story, bringing to mind a few Hitchcock classics. Visually splendid, Broken Embraces is another colorful tapestry by Almodóvar that just doesn’t match up to his other works.