58 Time October 14, 2019
grew up with Almodóvar: in the 1980s, nutso,
glorious melodramatic visions like Women on the
Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Matador (both
featuring a very young Banderas, who, like Cruz,
has long been an Almodóvar regular) were like
nothing we’d ever seen. But as out-there as they
were, they also rang with generosity. Almodóvar
has always been attuned to women’s experience,
certainly, but also to drag queens and all manner
of people who might have reason to feel like mis-
fits. He was reckoning with trans identity long be-
fore most of us were thinking about it— Almodóvar
made a place for everyone.
So to see Almodóvar-as-Salvador suffering in
this way is acutely painful—yet this movie is hardly
joyless. In its most beautiful scenes, Salvador
spends time with his mother (Julieta Serrano), now
aged, teasing her gently even after she’s spoken
somewhat sharply to him. Frail but still peppery,
she sits in a chair in the bedroom he’s prepared for
her—it’s covered in a bright purple print, a faux
flower garden unto itself. In a box of old things,
she comes across an old-fashioned wooden darn-
ing egg. Salvador’s face lights up—he remembers
watching her use it—and when she hands it to him,
his hand curls around it like the treasure it is.
There’s color all around them in the room, and
in their life together. Almodóvar’s colors—
as brought to life here by his production
designer Antxón Gómez, and as cap-
tured by his frequent cinematogra-
pher José Luis Alcaine—aren’t just a
stimulant but an energy source, like
sugar: they get the eyes busy and keep them
working, in turn heating up the brain’s fur-
nace, and before long, the heart starts pumping
harder too. Everything about Pain and Glory
is awake and alive, and Almodóvar’s nerve
endings become ours as well. Pedro AlmodóvAr’s world hAs AlwAys been
one of color. He’ll ask his actors to perform the most
delicately complex scenes in front of wildly pat-
terned wallpaper. The furnishings in his characters’
apartments are like visual music: hanging lamps in
tangerine and turquoise, vases of van Gogh–hued
flowers, couches whose fabric channels the upbeat
mood of a tiki bar. He orchestrates the outdoors
too, by making judicious use of a mosaic wall, a
brightly painted door, trees that have been saving
up all their chlorophyll just for him.
Color is everywhere in Almodóvar’s astonishing
and deeply moving Pain and Glory. But a brilliant
filmmaker can always make you see the world in a
new way, and the colors of Pain and Glory are like
a newly discovered dialect in a familiar language.
Antonio Banderas plays Salvador Mallo, a success-
ful filmmaker in his 60s living in Madrid (and ob-
viously a fictional stand-in for Almodóvar himself).
Salvador suffers from a list of aches, pains and ail-
ments as long as those reams of tiny print on the
folded-up paper that comes tucked into an aspirin
bottle: digestive issues, migraines, anxiety and,
worst of all, debilitating back pain. He has plenty
of money, but he hasn’t made a film in ages and
may never make one again. He runs into an aging
actress from his past, who asks him what he’ll do
if he stops making movies. “Live, I guess,” he re-
sponds, but if the words sound positive enough,
his eyes tell the real story: they’re weary, like a
crumpled tissue.
But a series of reconnections and recollections
gradually bring Salvador back to life. A long-lost
love, Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), re-emerges
as if from the ether. Salvador reflects on his deeper
past too, particularly his precocious childhood in
a small Spanish village: he thinks of the teenage
construction worker (César Vicente) who used to
come to his family’s house, who ignited the first
spark of erotic desire in him as a youngster. But his
most tender memories are reserved for his capa-
ble, affectionate mother, played by Penélope Cruz.
Radiant and vital, she looks barely older than she
did in Almodóvar’s 1999 All About My Mother.
Not all of Pain and Glory is strictly auto-
biographical. But Banderas’ performance—maybe
the finest he’s ever given—is so fine-grained in
its attentiveness to every nuance of physical and
psychic suffering that you can’t help thinking Al-
modóvar is speaking through him. Some of us
MOVIES
Banderas, alive
with color
By Stephanie Zacharek
TimeOff Reviews
SONY PICTURES CLASSICS (2)
△
Banderas gives
possibly the best
performance of
his careerA radiant
Cruz plays a
filmmaker’s
mother, and a
memory
▽