A cubist soap opera with enough time-shifted twists and turns to induce travel sickness, Broken Embraces is a distinctly disposable offering from Almodovar. Nevertheless, even his throwaway efforts would be considered absolute keepers by most filmmakers.
Broken Embraces (2009)
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Reviews Counted:133
Fresh:108
Rotten:25
Average Rating:7/10
Consensus: Pedro Almodovar's fourth film with Penélope Cruz isn't his finest work, but he brings his signature visual brilliance to this noirish tale, and the cast turns in some first-class performances.
Australian Rating: TBC
Genre: Foreign Films
Australian Theatrical Release:
Apr 4, 2009 Wide
US Box Office: $4,281,527
Synopsis:
A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car rash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he not only lost his sight, he also lost , thef his...
A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car rash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he not only lost his sight, he also lost , thef his life.
Lena love o This man uses two names: Harry Caine, a playful pseudonym with which he signs his literary works, stories and scripts, and Mateo Blanco, his real name, with which he lives and signs the film he directs. After the accident, Mateo Blanco reduces himself to his seudonym, Harry Caine. If he can’t direct films he can only survive with the idea that
Mateo Blanco died on Lanzarote with his beloved Lena. In the present day, Harry Caine lives thanks to the scripts he writes and to the help he gets rom his faithful former production manager, Judit García, and from Diego, her son, his
secretary, typist and guide. Since he decided to live and tell stories, Harry is an active, attractive blind man who has
developed all his other senses in order to enjoy life, on a basis of irony and self‐induced amnesia. He has erased from his biography any trace of his first identity, Mateo Blanco. One night Diego has an accident and Harry takes care of him (his mother, Judit, is out of Madrid and they decide not to tell her anything so as not to alarm her). During the first nights of his convalescence, Diego asks him about the time when he answered to the name of Mateo Blanco, after a moment of astonishment Harry can’t refuse and he tells Diego hat happened fourteen years before with the idea of entertaining him, just as a father
tells his little child a story so that he’ll fall asleep. The story of Mateo, Lena,
Judit and Ernesto Martel is a story of “amour fou”, dominated by fatality, jealously, the abuse of power, treachery and a guilt complex. A moving and terrible story, the most expressive image of which is the photo of two lovers embracing, torn into a thousand pieces. --© Sony Pictures Classics
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Starring: Penélope Cruz, Lluis Homar, Lola Dueñas, Ángela Molina
Starring: Penélope Cruz, Lluis Homar, Lola Dueñas, Ángela Molina, Carlos Leal, Ruben Ochandiano, Rossy De Palma, Tamar Novas, Blanca Portillo, Kiti Manver, Chus Lampreave
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar
Producer: Agustin Almodovar
Composer: Alberto Iglesias
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Reviews for Broken Embraces
Spain's best-known living director Pedro Almodovar ranks among the modern masters of melodrama -- as he demonstrates once again in Broken Embraces
Sorry, Pedro, but this tepid trudge through the shallow stuff of men is most remarkable for being such a dramatic under-performer.
Even though it may not be Almodovar’s best film, it is still eminently watchable and thoroughly enjoyable.
Hypnotic beauty and emotion reveal the Spanish director to be still at the height of his powers.
In Broken Embraces, his vibrant new mixed genre thriller, he is out to entertain and intrigue. Almodovar also wants to tell us something about desire and his love of cinema.
Tending to meander at times, there's still plenty to enjoy if typical Almodovar multiple narratives don't confuse you.
The sure cinematic hand of Pedro Almodóvar falters and fumbles here as he attempts to fuse together a melodrama with a thriller plus something of a spiritual journey for his central character, Mateo ... superbly portrayed by Lluis Homar
With its themes of revenge, sexual obsession, love and jealousy, Pedro Almodóvar follows his own tried and true recipe for grand melodrama...characters spin complex webs. It's engaging and involving, although it is not Almodóvar's best work
While the writing isn't as sharp or as funny as it is in Almodovar's best movies, so be it--it's a hell of a lot sharper and more interesting than most of the mass-produced movies coming out of Hollywood.
This meandering melodrama is too fractured, too soap opera-ish and is just too odd ... even by the Oscar-winning, Spanish filmmaker's usual standards.
Above all, "Broken Embraces" shows how deeply Almodóvar is in love with movies, not just as things to be watched and enjoyed, but to be felt deep in the bones.
Gives us few reasons not to stay to the ending, but the ultimate revelation of Blanco's pain ... disappoints.
A very worthy close-out for his remarkable output of the last decade.
A cliche-ridden exercise that never exhibits any real heart and focuses on characters who never come alive, it also never comes close to living up to the promise of the names in the credits.
In Almodóvar, the past is reckoned by characters of the present, a layering over which we revel.
Almodovar dives into this knotty, plotty mess the only way he can - with utter abandon and what might be best described as a kind of artful recklessness.
The end result is less than the sum of its parts, a smoke 'n' mirrors melodrama that peters out just when it should be revving into high gear.
The unbeatable Oscar-winning combination of legendary Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodovar and international superstar beauty Penelope Cruz makes this lavishly mounted melodrama a cinematic gem.
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