Penelope Cruz & Lluis Homar

Sleek and swank, Pedro Almodovar's latest movie, "Broken Embraces," is destined to be overlooked come awards time.

Almodovar's talent and interests are those of a mellow craftsman who serves his themes and performers without much fuss. It's a strange thing to say about a moviemaker working at his level -- once a provocateur, now a cinematic nostalgist with taste -- but Almodovar can be taken for granted far too easily. His genre samplings, a little noir, a little melodrama, a little comedy, speak to the writer-director's slavish adoration of studio-era Hollywood, yet the synthesis of these elements is almost magically assured.

"Broken Embraces" reworks a slew of noir plot lines for a stimulating story of an affair between a call girl turned actress and her director, and the prying eyes just off-camera. The funny thing about the movie is that Almodovar could've played it entirely for laughs, with a flick of his wrist and a tonal adjustment. It's best he didn't, though. The movie putters near the end, but it's a film lover's delight.

Almodovar focuses first on screenwriter Mateo (Lluis Homar), who at the picture's start indulges in a lovely interlude with a young woman in his impeccably art-directed Madrid apartment. Mateo is blind; his directorial career in the past, he now concentrates on writing. The story of his accident, and the love of his life, unspools in flashback as Mateo tells the son (Tamar Novas) of Mateo's devoted longtime associate (Blanca Portillo) the story of his sustaining love affair.

Penelope Cruz plays Lena, his siren, muse and soul mate. As a character she may be more patchwork fakery, made up of bits of celluloid, than a dimensional character. It hardly matters; all is artifice in "Broken Embraces," yet Almodovar's mastery is such that we're pleased to be taken on the ride. Back to 1992: Secretary by day, call girl by night, Lena dreams of acting. Her sugar daddy, Martel (Jose Luis Gomez), a controlling, jealous older man, bankrolls the film that affords Lena her big break. This is Mateo's project, a comedy titled "Girls and Suitcases." And this is Almodovar's little joke. The footage we see re-creates the setting and situations of Almodovar's own "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."

Voyeurism runs rampant in this crowd. In the '90s flashbacks the producer's son is assigned by dad to shoot his own "making of" footage, so that the justifiably suspicious Martel can keep tabs on his mistress and his director. From the first close-up of Cruz, the director's fate is sealed. She is too beautiful not to risk everything for, and as Almodovar's movie blends different film stocks for different purposes, the superb cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto's lighting for 35mm as well as cruddy-looking 16mm (the son's "making of" footage) envelops the story in all the right visual layers.

And now, a few words from the ingrate.

"Broken Embraces" is not quite a classic. "Volver," to name another reason why Almodovar has had such a rewarding decade, blended just as many genres in a more striking and original way. The piece loses compression just when it should tighten the narrative screws. Still, I was rewarded, richly, on a second viewing. And composer Alberto Iglesias, riffing on everyone from Miklos Rosza to Max Steiner, somehow ties the various genre impulses together, elegantly.

 

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"Broken Embraces" Movie Trailer

 

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MPAA rating: R (for sexual content, language and some drug material).

Running time: 2:08.

Cast: Penelope Cruz (Lena); Lluis Homar (Mateo); Blanca Portillo (Judit); Jose Luis Gomez (Ernesto); Ruben Ochendiano (Ray X); Tamar Novas (Diego).

Credits: Written and directed by Pedro Almodovar; produced by Esther Garcia. A Sony Pictures Classics release.