Pain and Glory (2019)

[steve jaros]

Title: Pain and Glory

Genre: Drama

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Nora Navas, Julieta Serrano, Penélope Cruz, César Vicente, Asier Flores, Cecilia Roth, Susi Sánchez, Raúl Arévalo, Pedro Casablanc, Julián López, Eva Martín, Sara Sierra, Constancia Céspedes, Rosalía, Marisol Muriel, Paqui Horcajo, Alba Gómez, Xavier Sáez, Aline Casagrande, Luis Calero, Virgil-Henry Mathet, Chimezie Eke, Esperanza Guardado, Agustín Almodóvar, Miguel Rivera, Eneko Galende, Fernando Iglesias

Release: 2019-03-22

Runtime: 114

Plot: Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.

 

[steve jaros]

Saw this for free thanks to Fandango rewards for booking my A-List through them.

What a treat! This Spanish language film is essentially a character study of an aging film director who has encounters in the present that evoke formative situations from his past. The film is beautifully acted and scored. Antonio Banderas, Nora Navas, and Penelope Cruz are all excellent.

It's impossible to watch this and not think this film is the director's autobiography. In any event, highly recommended.

A

 

[bujaki]

Saw this for free thanks to Fandango rewards for booking my A-List through them.

What a treat! This Spanish language film is essentially a character study of an aging film director who has encounters in the present that evoke formative situations from his past. The film is beautifully acted and scored. Antonio Banderas, Nora Navas, and Penelope Cruz are all excellent.

It's impossible to watch this and not think this film is the director's autobiography. In any event, highly recommended.

A

A+. The centerpiece of the film is Leonardo Sbaraglia's hypnotic and heart-rending rendition of the film director's monologue for the stage. For me it echoed Dodsworth's desperate cry to his wife: "Love has got to stop some place short of suicide." The delicacy and restraint shown by Almodóvar as he depicts the director as a young boy experiencing for the first time, without even realizing it, the joy and the mystery of eros at the sight of the young laborer is an ode to the last vestiges of childhood innocence.
This film is a masterpiece and, as the title says, it is about Pain and Glory. The director can't have one without the other.

 

[Jim*Tod]

Agreed. Truly a remarkable film and perhaps Almodovar's most emotional film.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I saw this last week and loved it. It's so well-crafted and just completely engaging to watch from beginning to end.

Spain has submitted this for Best International Film (formerly known as Best Foreign Language Film.) I think they've got a real shot with this one. (Of course, there's also Parasite which I'm hearing a lot of buzz about, but which hasn't opened here yet.) But I'd be surprised if this doesn't at least get nominated. I would also not hesitate to put in Antonio Bandaras for Best Actor, although that happens more rarely for foreign films so you never know. In any case, this is Bandaras' best performance that I have ever seen.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Antonio Bandaras spoke with Pete Hammond of Deadline about this film and his career:

https://deadline.com/video/antonia-banderas-pain-and-glory-career-interview-the-actors-side/

 

[bujaki]

Antonio Bandaras spoke with Pete Hammond of Deadline about this film and his career:

https://deadline.com/video/antonia-banderas-pain-and-glory-career-interview-the-actors-side/

@Jake Lipson, Banderas, not Bandaras.
I'm glad you liked the film. It's a great work of art.

 

[Jake Lipson]

You're right. That's odd. My computer spellchecker didn't have it as wrong.

 

[GlennF]

On the recommendation of everyone above I went to see this movie and enjoyed it a lot. Loved the production design and then was interested to find out they actually used Almodovar's house. (Love those kitchen cabinets!) Thanks for the heads up.