2010年。 監督・脚本はペドロ・アルモドバル。
盲目の元映画監督が、過去を回想する物語。
女性のエロさへのこだわりと、カラフルな色使いがペドロ・アルモドバル監督らしい。
あんなにカラフルな部屋で暮らしたか、目がチカチカして不眠症になると思う。
ペネロペ・クルスがオードリー・ヘップバーンそっくりのメイクしてるな~と思ったら、劇中でも触れられてました。 そっくりです。 あんまり必要なさそうなシーンで脱いじゃう女優魂がすごい。 しかしなんてエロくて美しい体をしてるんだ! あんまりこうゆうのを見慣れすぎると、実生活でEDになりやすいらしい。 太陽は罪な奴ですね。
ペネロペのファッションも素敵で、それを観てるだけでも結構楽しめます。
監督作にしてはストレートな脚本ですが、映画への熱い想いも感じられて面白かったです。
抱擁のかけら [DVD]
| フォーマット | 色, ドルビー, 字幕付き, ワイドスクリーン |
| コントリビュータ | ルイス・オマール, タマル・ンボバス, ペネロペ・クルス, ルベーン・オチャンディアーノ, ブランカ・ポルティージョ, ペドロ・アルモドバル, ホセ・ルイス・ゴメス |
| 稼働時間 | 2 時間 8 分 |
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商品の説明
女は、すべて手に入れたかった。男は、彼女だけがほしかった―
「死ぬ瞬間も抱き合っていたい」と願う男女の、<究極の愛>の物語。
■女性讃歌3部作で世界中の女性から圧倒的支持を受けた巨匠アルモドバルが描く、新しい愛の讃歌。
■ペネロペ・クルスがファム・ファタール<運命の女>を官能的に熱演。
■女優、映画監督、女優のパトロンの実業家―欲望と愛が入り乱れる危険な三角関係。
<ストーリー>
欲望と裏切りが引き起こした事件により、生涯をかけた愛、視力、そして人生までも失ったハリー・ケイン(ルイス・オマール)は、過去を封印し、名前を変えて違う人生を生きてきた。ある日、事件の謎を握る男との再会をきっかけに、ハリーは再び愛と向き合う。
14年前、ハリーはマテオ・ブランコの名前で映画監督として活躍、女優を夢見る女性レナ(ペネロペ・クルス)と出逢う。二人はひと目で恋に落ちるが、レナには富と権力で彼女を支配するパトロンのエルネスト(ホセ・ルイス・ゴメス)がいた。マテオとの出逢いで、愛に目覚め、女優として生きる喜びを知ったレナ。しかし行き過ぎた愛が、二人を引き裂く事件を引き起こす。
ハリーは愛を辿り、愛のかけらをつなぎあわせることで、事件の裏に隠された真実を知る。魂揺さぶる、その真実とは-。
<特典映像>
●未公開シーン
●スピンオフショートムービー
●オリジナル予告編
●メイキング(アルモドバル監督演出シーン)
登録情報
- アスペクト比 : 1.78:1
- 梱包サイズ : 19 x 13.6 x 1.6 cm; 99.79 g
- EAN : 4988105061491
- 監督 : ペドロ・アルモドバル
- メディア形式 : 色, ドルビー, 字幕付き, ワイドスクリーン
- 時間 : 2 時間 8 分
- 発売日 : 2010/7/7
- 出演 : ペネロペ・クルス, ルイス・オマール, ブランカ・ポルティージョ, ホセ・ルイス・ゴメス, ルベーン・オチャンディアーノ
- 言語 : 日本語 (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), スペイン語 (Dolby Digital 5.1)
- 販売元 : SHOCHIKU Co.,Ltd.(SH)(D)
- ASIN : B003JEYDUM
- ディスク枚数 : 1
- Amazon 売れ筋ランキング: - 176,000位DVD (の売れ筋ランキングを見るDVD)
- - 17,972位外国のドラマ映画
- カスタマーレビュー:
カスタマーレビュー
5つ星のうち4.4
星5つ中の4.4
168 件のグローバル評価
評価はどのように計算されますか?
全体的な星の評価と星ごとの割合の内訳を計算するために、単純な平均は使用されません。その代わり、レビューの日時がどれだけ新しいかや、レビューアーがAmazonで商品を購入したかどうかなどが考慮されます。また、レビューを分析して信頼性が検証されます。
トップレビュー
上位レビュー、対象国: 日本
レビューのフィルタリング中に問題が発生しました。後でもう一度試してください。
2015年3月13日に日本でレビュー済み
数え切れぬ抱擁とキスを繰り返し、愛の言葉を捧げた。でもそんなことより愛する人を一人で逝かせてしまったのか?それが全て。百万の愛の営みも、その行為の前には何も意味を為さない。だって永遠を誓ったのだから。だって愛の営みは初めて出会った人とだってできるのだから。
いろいろな愛の形が描かれている。狂おしく求めあう形。黙って側に寄り添っている愛の形。支配しようとする愛の形。
映像は相変わらず美しい。冒頭の映像、海辺の場面。部屋のインテリア。
だのに何故かのれない。ストリーテ―リングが引き込まれない。ペネロぺさんは美しいけど、なんでわざわざオードリーさんの真似をしなければならないの?”妖精”と言うには皺や頬のだぶつきが気になる。でもペネロぺさんには加齢によって磨かれた美しさがあるのに。
監督の自己満足はわかるんだけどついていけないかな?
いろいろな愛の形が描かれている。狂おしく求めあう形。黙って側に寄り添っている愛の形。支配しようとする愛の形。
映像は相変わらず美しい。冒頭の映像、海辺の場面。部屋のインテリア。
だのに何故かのれない。ストリーテ―リングが引き込まれない。ペネロぺさんは美しいけど、なんでわざわざオードリーさんの真似をしなければならないの?”妖精”と言うには皺や頬のだぶつきが気になる。でもペネロぺさんには加齢によって磨かれた美しさがあるのに。
監督の自己満足はわかるんだけどついていけないかな?
2010年8月13日に日本でレビュー済み
原題を直訳すると「こわれた抱擁」で、外国版のポスターも、
ウォーホール・チックな、サスペンス色の強いデザインです。
なのに、何なのだ、この日本版のジャケ・・・。
ファンシーな、ペネロペちゃん満喫ムービー??
確かに、コケティッシュなペネロペちゃんの魅力満載ですが、
それはあくまで、この映画の要素の一部であって、全部ではありません。
そこの部分だけを前面に押し出したような売り方は如何なものでしょう??
そういうペネロペちゃん映画を期待して見た人は、食い足りないと思うし、
本来こういう映画を好みそうな層を、逆に取りこぼしてしまっている気もします。
劇場でも、もっとヒットして良かったと思うのに、残念です。
肝心の映画の内容は、
色々な要素がてんこ盛りで、ちょっと詰め込み過ぎの印象は拭えません…。
が、映画全体のセンスの良さが、それら小さな欠点を凌駕してしまっています(笑)。
劇中に流れるロッセリーニの「イタリア旅行」も効果的!
ウォーホール・チックな、サスペンス色の強いデザインです。
なのに、何なのだ、この日本版のジャケ・・・。
ファンシーな、ペネロペちゃん満喫ムービー??
確かに、コケティッシュなペネロペちゃんの魅力満載ですが、
それはあくまで、この映画の要素の一部であって、全部ではありません。
そこの部分だけを前面に押し出したような売り方は如何なものでしょう??
そういうペネロペちゃん映画を期待して見た人は、食い足りないと思うし、
本来こういう映画を好みそうな層を、逆に取りこぼしてしまっている気もします。
劇場でも、もっとヒットして良かったと思うのに、残念です。
肝心の映画の内容は、
色々な要素がてんこ盛りで、ちょっと詰め込み過ぎの印象は拭えません…。
が、映画全体のセンスの良さが、それら小さな欠点を凌駕してしまっています(笑)。
劇中に流れるロッセリーニの「イタリア旅行」も効果的!
ベスト1000レビュアー
14年前の事故で光を失い名も捨てた脚本家。因縁ある実業家の死と彼の息子との再会をきっかけに彼は14年前の愛憎を振り返る。
アルモドバル作品にしてはストーリーにひねりがない。今回はじんわりと来る感じ。音楽や映像の美しさは相変わらず。劇中劇に加え今回は読唇術によるアフレコが面白い。
アルモドバルは嫉妬などの恋愛の醜い部分を描くのが本当にうまいと思う。エルネストの狂気に目がいきがちだが、ジュディットが嫉妬により自分達の作品を壊してしまう姿が悲しい。彼女の表情がとてもいい味を出している。ペネロペ演じるレナがヒロインに見えて、実は彼女がこの物語の真のヒロインであると思う。
アルモドバル節が冴える美しい悲劇と再生の物語。
劇中劇のワンシーンをもう一度流すラストとその後のマテオの「(映画は)完成させることに意義がある」というセリフが好き。
アルモドバル作品にしてはストーリーにひねりがない。今回はじんわりと来る感じ。音楽や映像の美しさは相変わらず。劇中劇に加え今回は読唇術によるアフレコが面白い。
アルモドバルは嫉妬などの恋愛の醜い部分を描くのが本当にうまいと思う。エルネストの狂気に目がいきがちだが、ジュディットが嫉妬により自分達の作品を壊してしまう姿が悲しい。彼女の表情がとてもいい味を出している。ペネロペ演じるレナがヒロインに見えて、実は彼女がこの物語の真のヒロインであると思う。
アルモドバル節が冴える美しい悲劇と再生の物語。
劇中劇のワンシーンをもう一度流すラストとその後のマテオの「(映画は)完成させることに意義がある」というセリフが好き。
2010年4月29日に日本でレビュー済み
アルモドバルが今回放った作品のテーマは愛だ。
狂おしいまでの愛、そしてその先にある嫉妬心という厄介なもの。
その深さに観ていてグイグイ引きこまれた。
シーンの1つ1つが美しい。特にラブシーン。
これほどいやらしさがなく、美しいラブシーンは久しぶりに観た。
映画の舞台裏を描いたという点でも
「あぁ、映画ってこうして出来るのだな」と興味深かった。
また忘れてならないのが色彩感。
相変わらずアルモドバル作品は、とくに赤が美しい。
それが出てきた瞬間これから何か始まるのではと思わせるほどだった。
そして最後。
ペネロペ・クルスを一番美しく撮れるのは
やはりアルモドバルであるなと実感した作品でもあった。
狂おしいまでの愛、そしてその先にある嫉妬心という厄介なもの。
その深さに観ていてグイグイ引きこまれた。
シーンの1つ1つが美しい。特にラブシーン。
これほどいやらしさがなく、美しいラブシーンは久しぶりに観た。
映画の舞台裏を描いたという点でも
「あぁ、映画ってこうして出来るのだな」と興味深かった。
また忘れてならないのが色彩感。
相変わらずアルモドバル作品は、とくに赤が美しい。
それが出てきた瞬間これから何か始まるのではと思わせるほどだった。
そして最後。
ペネロペ・クルスを一番美しく撮れるのは
やはりアルモドバルであるなと実感した作品でもあった。
2010年12月12日に日本でレビュー済み
『抱擁のかけら』は、2010年2月にロードショウで観ました。
アルモドバル流の愛に感動しました。
愛は、理性を失わせる。
しかし、それが人を愛するという事ではないのかと自分なりに解釈しました。
レナは、悲劇的な結末を迎えたのですが、
ハリーの記憶の中では美しいままで生き続けている。
破り捨てられていた写真が、更に二人の愛の美しさを強調している。
また、ジュジィットが目の見えなくなったマテオの腕を引きながら、
子供のディエゴと一緒に石段を降りるシーンに、
ジュジィットのひたむきな愛の美しさを感じました。
アルモドバル監督に作品に登場する人すべては、
苦悩と孤独を抱えており、そして本能的な愛情を求めている。
アルモドバル映画は、理性的な考えでは近づくことができない。
今、最も尊敬する映画監督です。
アルモドバル流の愛に感動しました。
愛は、理性を失わせる。
しかし、それが人を愛するという事ではないのかと自分なりに解釈しました。
レナは、悲劇的な結末を迎えたのですが、
ハリーの記憶の中では美しいままで生き続けている。
破り捨てられていた写真が、更に二人の愛の美しさを強調している。
また、ジュジィットが目の見えなくなったマテオの腕を引きながら、
子供のディエゴと一緒に石段を降りるシーンに、
ジュジィットのひたむきな愛の美しさを感じました。
アルモドバル監督に作品に登場する人すべては、
苦悩と孤独を抱えており、そして本能的な愛情を求めている。
アルモドバル映画は、理性的な考えでは近づくことができない。
今、最も尊敬する映画監督です。
2011年6月21日に日本でレビュー済み
アルモドバル監督らしい映画だなぁ、と思います。
一つは、可笑しみがあるということ。
例えば、冒頭、主人公が盲目だと判ったばかりだというのに、出会ったばかりの〈90‐68‐90〉のパツキンのおねーちゃんとヤッちゃってるとか。
嫉妬したエルネストが、偵察のために息子に撮らせた映像を見るときに、音声がないためレナとマテオの会話を読唇術を使える女性に語らせるわけですが、本人目の前にして、「あんな奴が上にのっているのが耐えられない」などど言っちゃうわけです。
それから、映像的なダジャレです。ベットがマッチの火で燃えているとか。
二つめは、やっぱり、強権的な父親(父性)に対する反抗ですね。
なぜか、アルモドバル監督作品は女性に人気があるようなのですが、実際は男目線の強い監督だと思います。「女性賛歌三部作」などと呼ばれる作品群でもその在・不在に関係なく、上から押し付けてくるような男らしさに対しての反感が感じられます。
お話自体は、「死と再生の物語」ということなんでしょうか。
まぁ、どんな話でも「死と再生」と「愛」の物語ではあるのですが、主人公の心が14年前の事件により死んでしまったところから、疑似家族による癒しを経て、きっかけを得たことにより再生に向かうのに、14年前の事件の裏にはその疑似家族が関わっていたという心が痛い展開。ただし、出来事に対して許しを求め、与える。次のステップを踏むために出来事を忘れるのではなく、記憶にする、一つの映画を公開するあてがなくても完成させるように。
この映画の特徴としては、過去の映画へのオマージュが見られるところですね。映画の衣装合わせの時の、モンロー風だとか、テレビで流れている映画だとかの判りやすものから、映像やセリフの引用など、劇中劇の形態をとるからか、映画をとることをストーリィに入れたからか、意識して使っていることが判ります。もしくは、芸術を理解しない出資者の横やりに怒るところなんか、監督自体、何か嫌なことがあったんでしょうかね。
一つは、可笑しみがあるということ。
例えば、冒頭、主人公が盲目だと判ったばかりだというのに、出会ったばかりの〈90‐68‐90〉のパツキンのおねーちゃんとヤッちゃってるとか。
嫉妬したエルネストが、偵察のために息子に撮らせた映像を見るときに、音声がないためレナとマテオの会話を読唇術を使える女性に語らせるわけですが、本人目の前にして、「あんな奴が上にのっているのが耐えられない」などど言っちゃうわけです。
それから、映像的なダジャレです。ベットがマッチの火で燃えているとか。
二つめは、やっぱり、強権的な父親(父性)に対する反抗ですね。
なぜか、アルモドバル監督作品は女性に人気があるようなのですが、実際は男目線の強い監督だと思います。「女性賛歌三部作」などと呼ばれる作品群でもその在・不在に関係なく、上から押し付けてくるような男らしさに対しての反感が感じられます。
お話自体は、「死と再生の物語」ということなんでしょうか。
まぁ、どんな話でも「死と再生」と「愛」の物語ではあるのですが、主人公の心が14年前の事件により死んでしまったところから、疑似家族による癒しを経て、きっかけを得たことにより再生に向かうのに、14年前の事件の裏にはその疑似家族が関わっていたという心が痛い展開。ただし、出来事に対して許しを求め、与える。次のステップを踏むために出来事を忘れるのではなく、記憶にする、一つの映画を公開するあてがなくても完成させるように。
この映画の特徴としては、過去の映画へのオマージュが見られるところですね。映画の衣装合わせの時の、モンロー風だとか、テレビで流れている映画だとかの判りやすものから、映像やセリフの引用など、劇中劇の形態をとるからか、映画をとることをストーリィに入れたからか、意識して使っていることが判ります。もしくは、芸術を理解しない出資者の横やりに怒るところなんか、監督自体、何か嫌なことがあったんでしょうかね。
他の国からのトップレビュー
Film Buff
5つ星のうち3.0
Where's the glue?
2016年3月9日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
For six films Pedro Almodóvar was at the very peak of his powers. Starting with the radically ‘different’ career-altering straight melodrama of The Flower of My Secret (1995) and moving through the explosive sexuality of Live Flesh (1997), the balanced perfection of All About My Mother (1999), the metaphysical depth of Talk to Her (2002), the extraordinary narrative gymnastics of Bad Education (2004), and the deeply moving return to the social concerns of women surviving patriarchy in Volver (2006), Almodóvar laid claim to being one of the very greatest (some say THE greatest) directors in contemporary cinema. Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos, 2009 ) is perhaps the inevitable reality check which illustrates the central truism that even ‘great’ directors sometimes make bad films. The fact that his next two works (The Skin I Live In [2011] and I’m So Excited! [2013]) also fail to measure up shows Almodóvar to be stuck in a career rut. His films still make money (I’m So Excited! is amazingly his second most profitable film after All About My Mother) and we shouldn’t over-state this sense of crisis just yet, but it remains to be seen if he can regain his artistic mojo with the up-coming Julietta. My gut tells me his best films are now behind him and we will look back on the period (1995-2006) in the same way we look back at what Ingmar Bergman did in the ‘60s. Let’s hope Almodóvar has an Autumn Sonata (1978) or a Fanny and Alexander (1982) still left to give us.
Before I go on to review an Almodóvar film I would usually attempt to contextualize what he does by outlining his position as a Spanish La Movida Madileña artist commenting on post-Franco society and his preoccupation with attack (on Francoism) and celebration (of democratic freedoms) with his themes of transition and identity search playing out in three areas – in politics, in the body and in the creative artistic process. Such a contextualization seems pointless though with Broken Embraces, a film which lacks such deep resonances. It is centrally concerned with the creative artistic process, but in a non-systematic way and at the expense of everything else. As with The Law of Desire (1987) and Bad Education the main character is a film writer/director doppelgänger for Almodóvar himself, but the focus is heavily self-indulgent and the film refuses to take off and connect with anything audiences can really latch onto and be moved by, either intellectually or emotionally. There is so much brilliance on display – the acting, the stunning photography, the top dollar production values, but the script jumps around so wildly with over-intricate complexity stopping us from really connecting with anything of substance. Bad Education is if anything even more fractured and complex but its highly charged sexuality, its political resonance, its impressive Chinese box narrative construction, and its autobiographical flourishes all provide the vibrant glue which brings the elements together spectacularly well. Such glue is absent here, the various elements of the film just failing to gel. The only autobiography we see comes from Almodóvar’s own filmography (especially the circumstances surrounding the making of Dark Habits [1984] and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown [1988]) and the failure to expand out from that makes the film curiously akin to navel-gazing. What follows contains spoilers.
Like Bad Education the action of Broken Embraces plays out in three time frames, 2008, 1992 and 1994. In 2008 ‘Harry Caine’ (Lluís Homar) is a blind film writer-director working in Madrid with his agent Judit (Blanca Portillo) and her son Diego (Tamar Novas). Recuperating from a near-fatal accident with drugs while his mother is away, Diego asks Caine to tell him about the past and especially why his secretive mother is scared of the son of a rich recently deceased financier Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) now calling himself Ray X (Rubén Ochandiano). In 1992 we see how the aging Martel hooked his beautiful young secretary Lena (Penélope Cruz). He ‘buys her’ (she is also a part time prostitute working for Madame Mylene [Kiti Mánver]) by paying for her father’s cancer treatment. In 1994 Lena is now Martel’s live-in mistress ambitious to be an actress. She auditions for Mateo Blanco, an established film director. Financed by Martel, the film is titled Girls and Suitcases (a clear spoof on Women on the Verge…) and during the shoot Lena and Mateo conduct an affair under the meddling eye of Martel’s son officially employed to do a ‘making of’ documentary, but actually there to spy on Mateo and Lena for his father. Intensely jealous, Martel finds out about the affair and physically abuses Lena. Mateo takes Lena for a month to Lanzarote, checking in to their hotel as ‘Harry Caine’. Meanwhile Martel sabotages the editing of Girls and Suitcases, having the film made from the worst takes to destroy the careers of both Mateo and Lena. Returning to Madrid with Lena, a car wreck results in her death and his blindness. Judit comes and finds Mateo is now ‘Harry Caine’ for good. Back in 2008 Judit decides to tell the truth about what really happened to Girls and Suitcases – that she allowed Martel to make the ruinous changes and she told him Mateo and Lena had gone to Lanzarote. She also tells Diego that Mateo is his father. Mateo is about to blackmail Ray X over the unused footage of Girls and Suitcases when Judit tells him she has kept it all having disobeyed Martel’s destruction order. The film finishes with Mateo re-cutting his film at the editing table alongside Judit and their son.
Broken Embraces is centrally concerned with the fragility of vision and how impossible it is to control what we see. The film’s narrative spins around the key event of the car crash which kills Lena and blinds Mateo. The blindness is both emotional (the loss of his love) and physical (the loss of his eyes). This is paralleled in the script with Martel meddling with his artistic vision as captured on celluloid as he re-cuts the film in Mateo’s absence. Even after something is photographed, the vision remains open to manipulation. It is on this register that Broken Embraces is at its most honest and effective, rooted as it is in Almodóvar’s own experience of having a producer meddle with his work after finishing it. In interview he explains, “Years ago, on one of my films, the producer arrived with 18 details to be retouched in editing. I refused and he said I could burn the material. I threatened him because the law was on our side, and I was vehement. I resisted for months, waiting for the situation to end, until the distributer came to demand the film and it had to be released as it was. And it was a success.” The film was Dark Habits and the producer Hervé Hachuel had also stipulated that Almodóvar feature his girlfriend Cristina Sánchez Pascual, even though the director wasn’t happy with her and had to change the script substantially because of limitations as he saw it in her acting. To this day Almodóvar still distances himself from the film, the experience of making it rankling within him and ending up here in Broken Embraces. The rescue of Girls and Suitcases is paralleled with Mateo surging back to life together with the discovery of his new-found family. The last shot is strongly suggestive of the three of them bonding as a family unit after years of all suffering different kinds of impaired vision – guilt for Judit at having co-operated with Martel, confusion for Diego over his paternal roots and the mysterious behavior of his mother, and creative oblivion for the director robbed of sight who finally ‘sees’ that “all films must be completed, even blindly.”
The difficulty of controlling one’s creative vision is also clearly laid out in the whole 1994 segment of the film which deals with the making of Girls and Suitcases. The film is obviously based on Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown with the terrorist changed to a cocaine dealer and lays out the essential battle that takes place on many films between director and producer, and how impossible it is for the director to ‘see’ without making compromises, without being ‘blinded’ by the producer and the commercial imperatives he carries with him. Not only does Martel make it impossible for Lena to concentrate on acting, but he pushes her down stairs breaking her leg in the process which necessitates script re-writes. He also makes his presence felt through his son Ernesto Jr. (Ray X) pointing his camera at everyone, getting in the way by making his ‘documentary’ so that daddy can see what Lena and Mateo are doing. The footage shot by him is presented as a film within a film by Almodóvar which acts as a constant irritation plagueing the production. This is an extension of Victoria Abril’s Scarface reality TV show presenter in Kika (1992) and continues the director’s attack on the Tube. The producer’s interference continues right into the cutting room and the director is only left free once he has died, and even then it is only because a loyal friend (Judit) has disobeyed the order to destroy all the original material. Almodóvar was once linked with going to Hollywood to direct Brokeback Mountain, but at the time he turned it down saying he would never be allowed to make the film as he would want to make it. Elsewhere he has described Hollywood films as ‘producer’s cinema’ so I guess we can’t expect an American film from him any time in the future…
The restless way the film flits around (especially between 2008 and 1994) suits the central theme of the difficulty of seeing concretely and the effect is muddled even further by the relentless quotes and references to others films and directors who are clearly of great importance to Mateo/Almodóvar. When Mateo is feeling down he wants to hear the voice of Jeanne Moreau (in Lift to the Scaffold [1957, Louis Malle]) and when Ernesto Jr. plagues Lena with his camera mounted on a tripod Peeping Tom (1960, Michael Powell) is cited. As Diego sorts through DVDs on Mateo’s shelf we hear the names of Nicholas Ray, Jules Dassin, Fritz Lang, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and films such as 8½ (1963, Fellini) and Fanny and Alexander (1982, Bergman). Watch the walls of Mateo’s home and studio and we can see posters of The Big Heat (1953, Lang) and Gun Crazy (1950, Joseph H. Lewis) among others. Most of these references don’t mean anything except to tell us what Mateo /Almodóvar value and the yardstick by which they measure themselves. The most meaningful quote (in the sense that we see Mateo and Lena watch a clip on TV) is to Voyage in Italy (1953, Roberto Rossellini). The way this is done underlines a great fault in this film as clearly the film isn’t as bedded within the narrative structure as All About Eve (1951, Joseph. L. Mankiewicz) is in All About My Mother or Bellissima (1951, Luchino Visconti) is in Volver. The clip we see is the famous one of Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders at Pompeii seeing a plaster cast of a couple in a locked embrace just as they had been 2,000 years ago at the very moment the lava from Vesuvius drowned them. The Bergman character realizes the cold embrace represents her own cold marriage and turns away in tears. Almodóvar clearly means to draw a parallel between the couple we see and the cold relationship Lena is locked into with Martel which Mateo is rescuing her from. Dig deeper though and we find the reference is wrong. In the Rossellini film the point is that both frozen couples had once been in love and that the realization that a living marriage has become so cold leads to Bergman's tears and a miraculous epiphany where they re-discover each other. This has nothing to do with Broken Embraces in which Lena’s relationship with Martel has never been romantic at all and there is no epiphany. The reference may appeal to Almodóvar as he is probably very eager to cite a film held up by the French New Wave as an important one in the history of cinematic modernism, but it lacks resonance of any kind for the story at hand beyond the surface reaction of Lena to cold marriage and is thus pretentious.
Almodóvar is usually so good at bedding his references within the fabric of his films and pretension is not a word I would usually use for him, but clearly in Broken Embraces there is something wrong with the relationships between the characters. All the fractured density of temporal jumping around, flashy film-referencing and cerebral meditation on ‘seeing’ pushes simple human relationships off the screen. The film is clearly meant to be a romance with Penélope Cruz putting in what seems to be a wonderful performance as a tragic beauty used and abused by the predatory Martel, but who gets a brief respite from her suffering with her relationship with Mateo. Sadly, Almodóvar never allows us to feel her emotions, her desperation or her ecstasy. Indeed the lack of any romantic clinching scene between Lena and Mateo tells us that perhaps this director is temperamentally unsuited to romance. There is plenty of sex in all 19 Almodóvar films, but preciously little romance. Take the brief sequence here where Mateo takes Lena to Lanzarote. To a wonderful Miguel Poveda love song on the soundtrack the island is introduced by a loving helicopter shot which shows off the spectacular black sand beaches to perfection. Lena and Mateo are shown together. Lena often has her arms around him, but he always has his back turned to her, preoccupied with taking photographs – of the sculpture on the road, of the beach. One scene has him photographing a landscape as Lena hugs him from behind. Does this guy really love his partner? Or is he just a picture-taking monster, a machine to equal Ernesto Jr.? Even the would-be romantic clinch of the couple watching Voyage in Italy has to be accompanied by the taking of a self-timer-delayed photograph of the two of them. Perversely, Almodóvar refuses to let romance ever settle and we never sense Mateo is saddened by her death either, things which prove disastrous for Cruz whose wonderful performance goes completely for nothing in a film too busy depicting Mateo’s problems of ‘seeing’ within his own art to bother about his relationship with her. Another outstanding performance to suffer is Blanca Portillo’s Judit. Barely on screen for the first two thirds of the film, we are given fleeting hints that she had been in a relationship with Mateo long ago and that she is hiding something, but suddenly without warning she’s given a grandstand restaurant scene in which she reveals how she cooperated with Martel to destroy Girls and Suitcases. In itself the scene is grippingly played and shot, but we are left wondering why we couldn’t have seen more of her in the film and the sudden shift of focus from Mateo to her sits very uneasily indeed. The film being firmly centered on Mateo surely it would have made better sense to feature his reaction to her words rather than focus so deeply on her face in one spectacular scene which seems to have strayed in from another film entirely. The following morning’s revelation to Diego that Mateo is his father is also mismanaged. Without any build-up, our reaction is simply, “So what?” Like Cruz, Portillo is a marvelous actress, but again her performance has been sabotaged by a director too busy focusing on his own creative process to worry about letting his characters breathe believably. Almodóvar is usually such an accomplished actor-director that it comes as a surprise that he could get the balance so wrong in this film. So much more could have been achieved with so much less self-reflexivity.
Lovers of Almodóvar will want to see this film. It does exhibit many of his hallmarks – the lush Rodrigo Prieto primary color photography, Antxón Gómez’s chic production designs (check out Martel’s sumptuous home!) and the appearance of many of the usual actors (Rossy De Palma, Lola Dueñas, Chus Lampreave, Ángela Molina, Mariola Fuentes, Carmen Machi, etc) are all eye-catching. Lovers of Women on the Verge… will also relish re-visiting old territory. It is perhaps useful to see a less successful Almodóvar if only to appreciate the other films which are so much better. Bad Education and The Law of Desire are also centrally about the artistic process, but they never for one moment ever forget about the character relationships central to the story, everything bedded within a rich intoxicating ‘texture’ which entirely eludes the director here.
This Pathé DVD features handsome visuals (aspect ratio 2.35:1 / 16:9 Widescreen) and clean 2.0 Dolby Digital Sound. The extras are interesting – three deleted scenes including an alternative version of Judit’s restaurant catharsis shot completely in the dark. There’s also a 7-minute short film La Concejala Antropófaga which features Carmen Machi talking dirty in an outtake from Girls and Suitcases. This raised the disc to an 18 certification, Broken Embraces having been rated 15.
Before I go on to review an Almodóvar film I would usually attempt to contextualize what he does by outlining his position as a Spanish La Movida Madileña artist commenting on post-Franco society and his preoccupation with attack (on Francoism) and celebration (of democratic freedoms) with his themes of transition and identity search playing out in three areas – in politics, in the body and in the creative artistic process. Such a contextualization seems pointless though with Broken Embraces, a film which lacks such deep resonances. It is centrally concerned with the creative artistic process, but in a non-systematic way and at the expense of everything else. As with The Law of Desire (1987) and Bad Education the main character is a film writer/director doppelgänger for Almodóvar himself, but the focus is heavily self-indulgent and the film refuses to take off and connect with anything audiences can really latch onto and be moved by, either intellectually or emotionally. There is so much brilliance on display – the acting, the stunning photography, the top dollar production values, but the script jumps around so wildly with over-intricate complexity stopping us from really connecting with anything of substance. Bad Education is if anything even more fractured and complex but its highly charged sexuality, its political resonance, its impressive Chinese box narrative construction, and its autobiographical flourishes all provide the vibrant glue which brings the elements together spectacularly well. Such glue is absent here, the various elements of the film just failing to gel. The only autobiography we see comes from Almodóvar’s own filmography (especially the circumstances surrounding the making of Dark Habits [1984] and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown [1988]) and the failure to expand out from that makes the film curiously akin to navel-gazing. What follows contains spoilers.
Like Bad Education the action of Broken Embraces plays out in three time frames, 2008, 1992 and 1994. In 2008 ‘Harry Caine’ (Lluís Homar) is a blind film writer-director working in Madrid with his agent Judit (Blanca Portillo) and her son Diego (Tamar Novas). Recuperating from a near-fatal accident with drugs while his mother is away, Diego asks Caine to tell him about the past and especially why his secretive mother is scared of the son of a rich recently deceased financier Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez) now calling himself Ray X (Rubén Ochandiano). In 1992 we see how the aging Martel hooked his beautiful young secretary Lena (Penélope Cruz). He ‘buys her’ (she is also a part time prostitute working for Madame Mylene [Kiti Mánver]) by paying for her father’s cancer treatment. In 1994 Lena is now Martel’s live-in mistress ambitious to be an actress. She auditions for Mateo Blanco, an established film director. Financed by Martel, the film is titled Girls and Suitcases (a clear spoof on Women on the Verge…) and during the shoot Lena and Mateo conduct an affair under the meddling eye of Martel’s son officially employed to do a ‘making of’ documentary, but actually there to spy on Mateo and Lena for his father. Intensely jealous, Martel finds out about the affair and physically abuses Lena. Mateo takes Lena for a month to Lanzarote, checking in to their hotel as ‘Harry Caine’. Meanwhile Martel sabotages the editing of Girls and Suitcases, having the film made from the worst takes to destroy the careers of both Mateo and Lena. Returning to Madrid with Lena, a car wreck results in her death and his blindness. Judit comes and finds Mateo is now ‘Harry Caine’ for good. Back in 2008 Judit decides to tell the truth about what really happened to Girls and Suitcases – that she allowed Martel to make the ruinous changes and she told him Mateo and Lena had gone to Lanzarote. She also tells Diego that Mateo is his father. Mateo is about to blackmail Ray X over the unused footage of Girls and Suitcases when Judit tells him she has kept it all having disobeyed Martel’s destruction order. The film finishes with Mateo re-cutting his film at the editing table alongside Judit and their son.
Broken Embraces is centrally concerned with the fragility of vision and how impossible it is to control what we see. The film’s narrative spins around the key event of the car crash which kills Lena and blinds Mateo. The blindness is both emotional (the loss of his love) and physical (the loss of his eyes). This is paralleled in the script with Martel meddling with his artistic vision as captured on celluloid as he re-cuts the film in Mateo’s absence. Even after something is photographed, the vision remains open to manipulation. It is on this register that Broken Embraces is at its most honest and effective, rooted as it is in Almodóvar’s own experience of having a producer meddle with his work after finishing it. In interview he explains, “Years ago, on one of my films, the producer arrived with 18 details to be retouched in editing. I refused and he said I could burn the material. I threatened him because the law was on our side, and I was vehement. I resisted for months, waiting for the situation to end, until the distributer came to demand the film and it had to be released as it was. And it was a success.” The film was Dark Habits and the producer Hervé Hachuel had also stipulated that Almodóvar feature his girlfriend Cristina Sánchez Pascual, even though the director wasn’t happy with her and had to change the script substantially because of limitations as he saw it in her acting. To this day Almodóvar still distances himself from the film, the experience of making it rankling within him and ending up here in Broken Embraces. The rescue of Girls and Suitcases is paralleled with Mateo surging back to life together with the discovery of his new-found family. The last shot is strongly suggestive of the three of them bonding as a family unit after years of all suffering different kinds of impaired vision – guilt for Judit at having co-operated with Martel, confusion for Diego over his paternal roots and the mysterious behavior of his mother, and creative oblivion for the director robbed of sight who finally ‘sees’ that “all films must be completed, even blindly.”
The difficulty of controlling one’s creative vision is also clearly laid out in the whole 1994 segment of the film which deals with the making of Girls and Suitcases. The film is obviously based on Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown with the terrorist changed to a cocaine dealer and lays out the essential battle that takes place on many films between director and producer, and how impossible it is for the director to ‘see’ without making compromises, without being ‘blinded’ by the producer and the commercial imperatives he carries with him. Not only does Martel make it impossible for Lena to concentrate on acting, but he pushes her down stairs breaking her leg in the process which necessitates script re-writes. He also makes his presence felt through his son Ernesto Jr. (Ray X) pointing his camera at everyone, getting in the way by making his ‘documentary’ so that daddy can see what Lena and Mateo are doing. The footage shot by him is presented as a film within a film by Almodóvar which acts as a constant irritation plagueing the production. This is an extension of Victoria Abril’s Scarface reality TV show presenter in Kika (1992) and continues the director’s attack on the Tube. The producer’s interference continues right into the cutting room and the director is only left free once he has died, and even then it is only because a loyal friend (Judit) has disobeyed the order to destroy all the original material. Almodóvar was once linked with going to Hollywood to direct Brokeback Mountain, but at the time he turned it down saying he would never be allowed to make the film as he would want to make it. Elsewhere he has described Hollywood films as ‘producer’s cinema’ so I guess we can’t expect an American film from him any time in the future…
The restless way the film flits around (especially between 2008 and 1994) suits the central theme of the difficulty of seeing concretely and the effect is muddled even further by the relentless quotes and references to others films and directors who are clearly of great importance to Mateo/Almodóvar. When Mateo is feeling down he wants to hear the voice of Jeanne Moreau (in Lift to the Scaffold [1957, Louis Malle]) and when Ernesto Jr. plagues Lena with his camera mounted on a tripod Peeping Tom (1960, Michael Powell) is cited. As Diego sorts through DVDs on Mateo’s shelf we hear the names of Nicholas Ray, Jules Dassin, Fritz Lang, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and films such as 8½ (1963, Fellini) and Fanny and Alexander (1982, Bergman). Watch the walls of Mateo’s home and studio and we can see posters of The Big Heat (1953, Lang) and Gun Crazy (1950, Joseph H. Lewis) among others. Most of these references don’t mean anything except to tell us what Mateo /Almodóvar value and the yardstick by which they measure themselves. The most meaningful quote (in the sense that we see Mateo and Lena watch a clip on TV) is to Voyage in Italy (1953, Roberto Rossellini). The way this is done underlines a great fault in this film as clearly the film isn’t as bedded within the narrative structure as All About Eve (1951, Joseph. L. Mankiewicz) is in All About My Mother or Bellissima (1951, Luchino Visconti) is in Volver. The clip we see is the famous one of Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders at Pompeii seeing a plaster cast of a couple in a locked embrace just as they had been 2,000 years ago at the very moment the lava from Vesuvius drowned them. The Bergman character realizes the cold embrace represents her own cold marriage and turns away in tears. Almodóvar clearly means to draw a parallel between the couple we see and the cold relationship Lena is locked into with Martel which Mateo is rescuing her from. Dig deeper though and we find the reference is wrong. In the Rossellini film the point is that both frozen couples had once been in love and that the realization that a living marriage has become so cold leads to Bergman's tears and a miraculous epiphany where they re-discover each other. This has nothing to do with Broken Embraces in which Lena’s relationship with Martel has never been romantic at all and there is no epiphany. The reference may appeal to Almodóvar as he is probably very eager to cite a film held up by the French New Wave as an important one in the history of cinematic modernism, but it lacks resonance of any kind for the story at hand beyond the surface reaction of Lena to cold marriage and is thus pretentious.
Almodóvar is usually so good at bedding his references within the fabric of his films and pretension is not a word I would usually use for him, but clearly in Broken Embraces there is something wrong with the relationships between the characters. All the fractured density of temporal jumping around, flashy film-referencing and cerebral meditation on ‘seeing’ pushes simple human relationships off the screen. The film is clearly meant to be a romance with Penélope Cruz putting in what seems to be a wonderful performance as a tragic beauty used and abused by the predatory Martel, but who gets a brief respite from her suffering with her relationship with Mateo. Sadly, Almodóvar never allows us to feel her emotions, her desperation or her ecstasy. Indeed the lack of any romantic clinching scene between Lena and Mateo tells us that perhaps this director is temperamentally unsuited to romance. There is plenty of sex in all 19 Almodóvar films, but preciously little romance. Take the brief sequence here where Mateo takes Lena to Lanzarote. To a wonderful Miguel Poveda love song on the soundtrack the island is introduced by a loving helicopter shot which shows off the spectacular black sand beaches to perfection. Lena and Mateo are shown together. Lena often has her arms around him, but he always has his back turned to her, preoccupied with taking photographs – of the sculpture on the road, of the beach. One scene has him photographing a landscape as Lena hugs him from behind. Does this guy really love his partner? Or is he just a picture-taking monster, a machine to equal Ernesto Jr.? Even the would-be romantic clinch of the couple watching Voyage in Italy has to be accompanied by the taking of a self-timer-delayed photograph of the two of them. Perversely, Almodóvar refuses to let romance ever settle and we never sense Mateo is saddened by her death either, things which prove disastrous for Cruz whose wonderful performance goes completely for nothing in a film too busy depicting Mateo’s problems of ‘seeing’ within his own art to bother about his relationship with her. Another outstanding performance to suffer is Blanca Portillo’s Judit. Barely on screen for the first two thirds of the film, we are given fleeting hints that she had been in a relationship with Mateo long ago and that she is hiding something, but suddenly without warning she’s given a grandstand restaurant scene in which she reveals how she cooperated with Martel to destroy Girls and Suitcases. In itself the scene is grippingly played and shot, but we are left wondering why we couldn’t have seen more of her in the film and the sudden shift of focus from Mateo to her sits very uneasily indeed. The film being firmly centered on Mateo surely it would have made better sense to feature his reaction to her words rather than focus so deeply on her face in one spectacular scene which seems to have strayed in from another film entirely. The following morning’s revelation to Diego that Mateo is his father is also mismanaged. Without any build-up, our reaction is simply, “So what?” Like Cruz, Portillo is a marvelous actress, but again her performance has been sabotaged by a director too busy focusing on his own creative process to worry about letting his characters breathe believably. Almodóvar is usually such an accomplished actor-director that it comes as a surprise that he could get the balance so wrong in this film. So much more could have been achieved with so much less self-reflexivity.
Lovers of Almodóvar will want to see this film. It does exhibit many of his hallmarks – the lush Rodrigo Prieto primary color photography, Antxón Gómez’s chic production designs (check out Martel’s sumptuous home!) and the appearance of many of the usual actors (Rossy De Palma, Lola Dueñas, Chus Lampreave, Ángela Molina, Mariola Fuentes, Carmen Machi, etc) are all eye-catching. Lovers of Women on the Verge… will also relish re-visiting old territory. It is perhaps useful to see a less successful Almodóvar if only to appreciate the other films which are so much better. Bad Education and The Law of Desire are also centrally about the artistic process, but they never for one moment ever forget about the character relationships central to the story, everything bedded within a rich intoxicating ‘texture’ which entirely eludes the director here.
This Pathé DVD features handsome visuals (aspect ratio 2.35:1 / 16:9 Widescreen) and clean 2.0 Dolby Digital Sound. The extras are interesting – three deleted scenes including an alternative version of Judit’s restaurant catharsis shot completely in the dark. There’s also a 7-minute short film La Concejala Antropófaga which features Carmen Machi talking dirty in an outtake from Girls and Suitcases. This raised the disc to an 18 certification, Broken Embraces having been rated 15.
schumann_bg
5つ星のうち4.0
beautifully acted
2015年12月15日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Broken Embraces should perhaps be one of Almodovar's best films, given his rapport with Penelope Cruz and the fact that it is so much about filmmaking itself. It also stars two outstanding actors in their biggest roles for him: Blanca Portillo and Lluis Homar. Both give enormous pleasure, and seem to give so much of themselves to the parts. Always one to think of his actors, Almodovar seems to give them dimensions that remained untapped in other films, so that Portillo, who was childless and unpartnered in Volver, here is primarily defined as a mother, perhaps. She is absolutely wonderful, and towards the end becomes the emotional centre of the film. Homar, likewise, was very good as the paedophile ex-priest in Bad Education, but here gets the plum romantic role, cavorting with Penelope in wigs of every shade (Penelope, that is). As usual, the film has a complicated plot, essentially going between two time bands, 1994 and 2008. It tells of the rise of Lena (Cruz) as an actress, her involvement with a rich industrialist film producer, her affair with a film director (Homar) and unhappy consequences of the love triangle. Portillo plays his assistant, and has a son called Diego who does a lot of listening in the film, convincingly because he is a sensitive lad. The problem is that the initial relationship is never convincing from Lena's point of view, and everything that follows feels a bit too much like something worked out on paper. Perhaps it is too late by the time the real love story kicks in, but it fails to deliver the emotional charge it might. This leaves the filmmaking strand to carry the emotional weight towards the end of the film, but it is too late to save Almodovar's film, really - it feels like film fragments without a proper centre. At the end we see part of the film that had been shot years before, and it is an amusing reworking of Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown, with the wonderful Carmen Machi taking the role of the fragile friend involved with the terrorist, but giving it a different style altogether. This was hilarious. Visually the film is as arresting as ever, one section being shot on Lanzarote, mirroring the darkness of what happens, and there is one particularly memorable image pulling away to reveal lots of torn up pieces of photographs. This could be a metaphor for the film itself, but Almodovar hasn't quite been able to cover over the joins.
David Howells
5つ星のうち1.0
Run of the mill perversion
2019年8月19日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Just another film by numbers from a typical perverted but not very talented director. That is why I only buy cheap, used DVDs.
Viv
5つ星のうち4.0
Not the best of Almodovar's films but a must for all his fans.
2010年9月1日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
The story feels as if it's been there before. Every now and then you think "Haven't I seen that somewhere?". Otherwise, a typical Almodovar piece - you must see it again because you blinked for a moment and missed something.
S. Dent
5つ星のうち4.0
Very good
2014年11月1日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
A very good film, Penelope is always good in her Spanish films, far better than when acting in English films; probably because
iEnglisn not being her first language?
iEnglisn not being her first language?
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