Well that was close... it appears I just got to see the new Pedro Almodovar on the big screen in it's last week of release! Yes Constant Reader... last night we went to see LOS ABRAZOS ROTOS (BROKEN EMBRACES) at the chi-chi Curzon Soho.

I had been dragging my feet about wanting to see it as all the publicity had led one to believe that it was 127 minutes of adulation at the altar of Saint Penelope but while it certainly showcases her even more than their previous collaboration VOLVER, the film is also so much more than that - especially if you are a Pedro fan!

As in LAW OF DESIRE and BAD EDUCATION, the main plot tells of a filmaker finding love and death linked together. Mateo (Lluis Homar) has been blind since the early 1990s and has been living ever since under the pseudonym of 'Harry Caine' carefully watched over by his agent Judit (Blanca Portillo) and her son Diego (Tamar Novas). News that a disgraced businessman Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez) has died is followed by a visit from the man's son (Rubin Ochandiano) in disguise asking the filmaker to write a script that will ruin his father's name further. Mateo refuses but the visit makes him finally relive and confront the period in his life when Martel produced a film for him and Martel's mistress Lena (Penelope Cruz) was first his leading lady and then his lover.Almodovar has shown in the past his particular strength at multi-strand story-telling and here he manages to tell a story which on paper would take an age to explain with a dazzling fluidity and confidence. The film lasts over 2 hours and after about 15 minutes of thinking "Right... so who is *this* character?" I just gave myself over to it and wandered happily through the labyrinthine plot as I was in the grip of a master filmmaker.
Again Almodovar shows his love and respect for cinema with a film that at times seems to be a tribute to several genres - usually at the same time! Just as VOLVER seemed to be a tribute to de Sica's working-class heroines for Sophia Loren, here Penelope Cruz seems to channel the great European screen goddesses of the 1960s with echoes of Loren (again), Claudia Cardinale, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. However it is a mark of the understanding between director and star that while suggesting these actresses - and visually referencing Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe to boot! - that Penelope Cruz also gives an excellent performance which if there is any justice should win her another Academy Award nomination.Joyful, sad, tempestuous, seductive, comic, tragic - Lena is one of Almodovar's great screen women and Cruz captures all these moods and more, making her totally believable and you can understand the vacuum in Mateo's life without her. As Mateo, Lluis Homar also gives an excellent performance, always watchable and always with an intelligence and humour to make his character fascinating.There is also a marvellous performance by Blanca Portillo as Judit, Mateo's ever-watchful agent. In a role that becomes more and more central as the film progresses, Portillo also becomes more and more powerful until towards the end of the film Judit has a scene where she reveals the truth of her involvement in Mateo's fate that is beautifully performed. After her fine supporting performance in VOLVER, it is great to see her in another Almodovar film.

The film also boasts a great performance by Jose Luis Gomez as the jealous and controlling Ernesto Martel. He turns in a silkily hiss-able nemesis to Mateo that is worthy of a Hitchcock villain but at the same time suggests the torment of a man trapped in an obsession and on the brink of losing his desired object. He uses his son (Ochandiano striking the film's one false performance note) to film Mateo and Lena on the set in the guise of making a documentary on the making of the film but uses the footage instead to spy on the lovers by screening it sitting next to a professional lip-reader - an exquisitely funny cameo by VOLVER's Lola Duenas).Almodovar manages one of his signature audacious filmic strokes in one of these scenes - as they sit and watch footage where Lena tells Mateo on the film-set of how she loves him and not Martel, Lena walks in behind them unobserved and takes over the commentary, telling him she no longer loves him as he watches her say it on the screen.

As well as Cruz, Homar, Portillo and Duenas making return visits there are also cameos from such Almodovar veterans as Chus Lampreave and Rossy de Palma in the film-within-the-film and Kiti Manver as the head of a call-girl service who Lena works for while working as Martel's secretary. There is also a small but moving performance from Angela Molina as Lena's mother, distressed at the neglect of her dying husband. Quite a different performance to her vengeful mistress in Pedro's LIVE FLESH.At the film's conclusion, Mateo is seen re-editing the film he made with Lena, a comedy called GIRLS AND SUITCASES. Pedro slyly slips in characters and the scenario of his own WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN - can it really be 21 years ago???? - and it also allows a returning Almodovar supporting actress Carmen Machi to steal the scene as Lena's on-screen friend Chon.Tamar Novas is fine as Diego but as I said above, Ruben Ochandiano pulls the focus too much in the flashback scenes as the gay son of Ernesto Martel. It's not his fault that he has to play the role in a horrid Worzel Gummage Strawberry blonde wig but he did little but suggest David Walliams as the flamingly gay Sebastian in LITTLE BRITAIN!

It goes without saying that the film's look is utterly stunning - every shot a mouthwatering fusion of Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography and Antxon Gomez' production design and again Alberto Iglesias has composed a score that always seems to be moving the film along on a musical conveyer-belt.

If I have one complaint about the film it's that I felt no particular warmth to any of the characters - a similar feeling I had to BAD EDUCATION. To the actors yes, but to the characters no. The emotional connection I immediately had to LAW OF DESIRE, WOMEN ON THE VERGE..., ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER and VOLVER is absent here.

However be that as it may, it is still a film that kept me gripped and a great addition to the work of this extraordinary director and his unique cinematic vision - viva Pedro!