Drama starring Antonio Banderas. Ageing film director Salvador Mello, struggling with a creative impasse and his own mortality, is invited to a screening of one of his early works. He reconnects with his old leading man whose drug problems caused the pair to fall out decades previously, and in turn finds himself tempted by heroin as a way to numb his pain.
An ailing middle-aged director looks back on his life to evade a creative impasse in this seemingly self-referential drama from Pedro Almodóvar, long established as Spain's leading film-maker. Sporting the same coiffed hair as Almodóvar himself, Antonio Banderas delivers a restrained, moving performance as a lonely maverick exploring family and emotional ties while various physical ailments leave him unable to work. A cinematheque screening of an early career triumph enables him to rebuild his friendship with a former leading man, but the pain of lost love and conflicted feelings over his relationship with his late mother aren't so easy to resolve. His addiction to film-making remains the one constant in his life, and, as the cleverly constructed story snakes back and forth from present travails to Fellini-esque memories (with Penélope Cruz as his long-suffering young mum), everything we see is invested with feeling - yet underplayed in a manner untypical of the Almodóvar oeuvre. While we're never quite sure how much is direct autobiography, the result is revealing, hugely emotive and arguably his most mature work to date.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Salvador Mallo | Antonio Banderas |
| Alberto Crespo | Asier Etxeandia |
| Federico | Leonardo Sbaraglia |
| Mercedes | Nora Navas |
| Jacinta (old) | Julieta Serrano |
| Eduardo | César Vicente |
| Savlador as a boy | Asier Flores |
| Jacinta (young) | Penélope Cruz |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Pedro Almodóvar |
