Broken Embraces

Broken Embraces (2009) begins with a blind screenwriter. He now uses the name Harry Caine, having abandoned his old name and his old life. A film he made fourteen years ago, and the woman who starred in it, have followed him ever since. When news of a death arrives, he starts to tell it. Almodóvar builds on a noir frame: a jealous rich man, his mistress, a director, and footage shot in secret. But the real subject is filmmaking itself, and how a relationship can be cut apart and reassembled in an edit room. Penélope Cruz leads, in their fourth collaboration. The film inside the film refers directly to Almodóvar's own Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, with scenes reshot almost exactly. It competed at Cannes. It runs 127 minutes. Good for: Almodóvar, cinema about cinema, and melodrama. Less good for: the structure moves constantly between two timelines and the first half hour struggles to place its characters. The emotional peak arrives late, and the noir elements never fully fuse with the rest.