Pain and Glory (2019, R)

There are still a few Oscar films from this season that I didn’t have a chance to get to before the ceremony, and this is one of them. Glad I was able to see it – lovely film, with a strong central performance.

Salvador is a celebrated filmmaker who’s gone into retirement due to a number of health troubles. As he grapples with pain and sickness, he struggles to know what to do with himself if he can’t make movies. When a renewed interest in one of his classics leads him to quasi-reconcile with an actor he used to work with, the questions of both his future and his past come to a head.

I’ll admit that I haven’t seen many of Pedro Almodóvar’s films, although the ones I have seen have interested me in seeing more. As such, I can’t say how Pain and Glory stands up to his best works, but I really liked it. It’s a slow-burning character piece about an artist that falls more on the self-reflection than navel-gazing side of the spectrum, and it does a nice job of creating a past celebrated career for Salvador that feels genuine; the references to old films of his, to scripts and honors and actors, feel lived-in, like they could really be. I really like seeing Salvador’s present struggles and questions interspersed with scenes from his childhood growing up in poverty.

I also like the overarching theme of Salvador’s health issues and chronic pain. The film keeps these everpresent in Salvador’s life in small ways, like how gingerly he gets in and out of a car or how he always sets down a pillow when he has to kneel. Pain management becomes an overriding focus for him, and it’s clear that he wouldn’t have retired from filmmaking if he didn’t feel like his health was barring him from it. It’s a good portrait of how chronic pain can affect every part of someone’s life.

The headline performance is of course Antonio Banderas as Salvador, who was nominated for Best Leading Actor. I really like this performance – Banderas conveys a lot through subtle things, and I appreciate that Salvador is allowed to be gay without it being The Big Thing of the story. The film also features Penélope Cruz as Salvador’s mother in flashbacks, and although I’m not familiar with him, I like Asier Etxeandia, who plays the actor Salvador gets back in touch with. Etxeandia does a great job as an actor who’s made a lot of bad personal decisions that have hurt his career but who can still really pull it out when it comes to his craft.

Warnings

Drinking/smoking/drug use, language, sexual references and sensuality (including brief nudity,) and thematic elements.