Pain and Glory

Unrated

9/28/20191h 54m

Premiere Release (US)

Overview:

Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.

Director:

Pedro Almodóvar

Status:

Released

Language:

Spanish

Buget:

$10,769,016.00

Revenue:

$37,359,689.00

Key words:

drug abuse
madrid, spain
cinema on cinema
movie business
creative crisis
sexual awakening
valencia, spain
chronic pain
film director
mother son relationship
theatrical production
gay theme
gay artist
earnest

Cast

Antonio Banderas

~ as ~

Salvador Mallo

Asier Etxeandia

~ as ~

Alberto Crespo

Leonardo Sbaraglia

~ as ~

Federico Delgado

Nora Navas

~ as ~

Mercedes

Julieta Serrano

~ as ~

Old Jacinta

Penélope Cruz

~ as ~

Jacinta

César Vicente

~ as ~

Eduardo

Asier Flores

~ as ~

Young Salvador

Cecilia Roth

~ as ~

Zulema

Susi Sánchez

~ as ~

Pious Woman from Paterna

View full cast & crew

Reviews (2)

SWITCH.
Written 5 year(s) ago
9
If you were to tell me that ‘Pain and Glory’ was Pedro Almodóvar’s final film, I would be inclined to believe you. Rarely has the act of looking back on one's past been so vividly and honestly depicted, and so richly and emotionally satisfying. You can feel the need for this film to exist in every frame, a need to understand and reflect and celebrate and mourn. It is a portrait of an artist at a crossroads, entering the last act of their lives, looking back at what they have created and the battlefield left in their wake, and facing the terror of never creating again. ‘Pain and Glory’ is an intensely beautiful film, one that hangs in the air around you like a perfume for days after. The more I think back on it, the more certain I am that I’ve seen a masterwork. I cannot wait to see it again.
- Daniel Lammin
Read Daniel's full article... https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-pain-and-glory-almodovar-delivers-a-rhapsodic-masterwork
CinemaSerf
Written 1 year(s) ago
7
This is a wonderful notional career retrospective of filmmaker "Salvador Mallo" (Antonio Banderas) who has a reached an age where he struggles with painkillers and mobility issues - and so embarks on a bit of nostalgia reliving his life. This will one day be described as a classic. Almodóvar at his most pure, grafting the fiction to the fact in such a beautifully crafted way that it is almost impossible to know how you feel whilst you watch it. Banderas is wonderful. He delivers the emotion and the humour - and there is enough of the latter to adequately temper the more emotional aspects of his performance - with consummate skill. Penélope Cruz who always seems more stunning every time she appears on screen plays his mother and even sings - what more could you ask for? In theory, there ought be little joy in this retrospective, but the self-discovery delivers a surprising amount of fulfilment and there is humour to be found here, too.