I'm not really an Almodovar buff, I've seen three or four of his movies - including Volver - and on the whole I can take him or leave him. He clearly knows enough not to shoot without first removing the lens cap but elementary knowledge does not a film-maker make though it has been known to make the odd cult director. This time around he devotes a lot of screen time to what is essentially a vignette that ate a big breakfast and there's an opening sequence in which the blind protagonists seduces a total stranger - the young girl who helped him across the road - that has no discernible relationship to anything that comes later. Several films are referenced including the butchered masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons and if this is Almodovar's ego at work - the protagonist Mateo Blanca reinvents himself as Harry Cain, Welles' FIRST masterpiece was Citizen Kane, his second was Ambersons, savagely edited by RKO whilst Welles was in South America; here Blanca's film is butchered by a jealous husband - someone should perhaps whisper in his ear that any comparison between himself and Awesome Welles is a joke. Having said that the acting is uniformly excellent but that's like serving Remy Martin with a pepperoni pizza.
Review of Broken Embraces
