Pain and Glory

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia, Penélope Cruz, Julieta Serrano and Leonardo Sbaraglia.

Genre: Drama

Duration: 112 minutes – Spanish with English subtitles (2019)

Oscar-winning director Pedro Almodóvar’s 21st film is an autobiographical narrative starring Antonio Banderas as Almodovar’s present-day tormented alter ego, and Penelope Cruz as his mother at the time of his youth. Pain and Glory tells of a series of reencounters experienced by Salvador Mallo, a film director in his physical decline. Some of them in the flesh, others remembered: his childhood in the 60s, the first desire, his first adult love, the pain of the breakup of that love while it was still alive and intense, writing as the only therapy to forget the unforgettable, the early discovery of cinema, and the infinite void that creates the incapacity to keep on making films. Pain and Glory talks about creation, about the difficulty of separating it from one’s own life and about the passions that give it meaning and hope. In recovering his past, Salvador finds the urgent need to recount it, and in that need he also finds his salvation.

Fresh with accolades at this year’s Cannes Film Festival where Banderas won Best Actor award and Alberto Iglesias won Best Soundtrack award, Pain and Glory has been selected as the Spanish entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020.

‘Almodóvar’s best work for years, marvellously framed and composed, comparatively restrained for him, hugely enjoyable moment by moment.’ David Sexton, London Evening Standard.

Courtesy of Ster-Kinekor and Filmfinity