Broken Embraces

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar (2009) **1/2

In the Spanish language Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodóvar’s 18th feature film, the director achieves what might be considered a humanist psychological thriller, an entertainment with the twists and surprises of an Alfred Hitchcock concoction, but with the dynamics of a family drama. The film begins, indeed, with a reference to the beginning of Hitchcock’s 1958 Vertigo: the extreme close-up of a human pupil. The pupil belongs to a beautiful young stranger invited to the apartment of blind author Harry Crane (Lluís Homar). She can see him, he can’t see her. The chance meeting soon becomes a romp on the couch. Broken Embraces contains more “embraces” than nearly any film of its kind, earning its “R” rating.

Crane, who narrates to the viewer that he used to be film director Mateo Blanco, is surprised to hear of the death of millionaire Ernesto Martel. He’s soon visited by a person I took to be Crane’s son, Diego (Tamar Novas), but isn’t (until it’s later revealed he is) and visited by a person I took to be Harry’s ex-wife, Judit (Blanca Portillo), but isn’t — though it’s later revealed she is the mother of Diego. Despite the complexity of the plot, much of Almodóvar’s story’s trajectory is unintentionally telegraphed and easily discerned. (One theater attendee posted online that one of the twists revealed was so obvious the audience burst out laughing. That’s not the reaction a film director hopes for.)

Crane is lastly visited by a man calling himself Ray X (Rubén Ochandiano) who wants to collaborate with Crane on a tale of parental revenge. Crane suspects Ray is the son of Ernesto Martel. He’s right. At this point, Broken Embraces flashes back sixteen years earlier, when ex-prostitute Lena (Penélope Cruz), working as a secretary for Martel, needs his financial assistance for her father, dying of cancer. Martel’s assistance comes with a cost; she becomes his not-so-willing mistress.

It’s here, in the past, that the worlds of Harry/Mateo, Ray X, Martel and Lena first cross; hoping to extract herself from Martel’s control, Lena meets Mateo and is cast as lead in a comedy he’s directing, Girls and Suitcases (an homage to Almodóvar’s own 1988 farce, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). The moment Lena and Mateo meet is love at first sight, and Cruz is shot so luminously it can only recall what may be the most beautiful introduction of any female lead on screen, Grace Kelly as Lisa Fremont in Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).

In order to keep tabs on Lena, Martel makes sure his son is hired to make a “documentary” on the making of Girls and Suitcases; silent footage from which Martel screens and has translated by a professional lip-reader. It’s how he learns of Lena’s betrayal, as she and Mateo have undertaken a passionate love affair.

Leaving to the viewer the enjoyment of what happens afterward, and what led to Crane’s blindness and double life, I’ll note instead the luxurious style with which Almodóvar tells his story, cinema carefully composed as a love letter to past cinema. The rich primary colors he’s chosen with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (more recently a collaborator on Martin Scorsese’s films) recall the sumptuous wide-screen compositions of director Douglas Sirk, and composer Alberto Iglesias’s score hearkens back to Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo score. An overhead shot involving a spiral staircase also recalls Vertigo, to the point of being nonsensical: Wouldn’t the ritzy hotel Mateo rushes down have a much more expedient elevator?

In the end, Broken Embraces‘ substance doesn’t match the panache of its style, beautiful scenary and all. The narrative is a sometimes uneasy mixture of thriller tropes and culminating scenes of family drama which would have been more effective and stirring had they been in a film all their own. The film’s suspense and appealing surface are nearly, but not quite, enough.

The Sony Pictures Classics DVD features deleted scenes, an oddly unfunny extended scene from the film within a film, Girls and Suitcases, New York Film Festival and Variety magazine promos, and a fascinating example of Almodóvar directing Cruz, in which he’s telling her what her character is thinking during a monologue. Watching her expressive facial expressions reacting to Almodóvar’s mental suggestions delightfully clarify what a talented actress she is.

—Michael R. Neno, 2021 Feb 9