Broken Embraces (2009)

"Many of the characters go by two different names. So best advice for optimum viewing is, see Broken Embraces...twice.  Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
"In Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz we have a real collaboration of artist and inspiration that only seems to improve and deepen over time.  Shawn Levy, Portland Oregonian

Editor's Note After LIVE FLESH, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, and VOLVER, director Pedro Almodóvar and his muse Penélope Cruz unite for a fourth time with this drama. Here, Almodóvar delves into noir style to tell a tale of a man (BAD EDUCATION?s Lluis Homar) with dual identities who tries to compartmentalize his life after he loses his love (Cruz) and his sight in a car crash.

	Lola Dueñas
	Ángela Molina
	Carlos Leal
	Ruben Ochandiano
	Rossy De Palma
	Blanca Portillo
	Tamar Novas
	Kiti Manver
	Chus Lampreave
	Penélope Cruz
	Lluis Homar
	Pedro Almodóvar - Screenwriter
	Rodrigo Prieto - Director of Photography
	Alberto Iglesias - Composer
	Agustin Almodovar - Producer
	Pedro Almodóvar - Director

Hollywood Reporter
"[T]horoughly engrossing....Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography is exquisite from the volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote to the many finely appointed interiors." 05/19/2009

Total Film
3 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he film's full of fine performances -- not least Cruz....There's much to enjoy here..." 07/23/2009

Rolling Stone
"It's hot-blooded, haunting and totally embraceable." 09/17/2009

USA Today
"As a film that pays tribute to vintage '50s Hollywood, BROKEN EMBRACES is a visual delight." 11/20/2009

Wall Street Journal
"[A] film that serves as a love letter to the movies, and a demonstration of the medium's mysterious power....Mr. Almodovar always loves to play games, thicken textures, keeps us enthralled by keeping us guessing." 11/20/2009

Rolling Stone
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Cruz exudes a sensual aura of mystery that holds you spellbound." 11/26/2009

New York Times
"The visual and aural textures are lush and sensual, as we've come to expect from Mr. Almodovar, and yet the rich colors and deep sonorities somehow illuminate an unusually austere emotional terrain." 11/20/2009

A.V. Club
"BROKEN EMBRACES welds Douglas Sirk melodrama to the most gracefully unsettling elements of Alfred Hitchcock, wrapping both in the stylish, hushed elegance that's become Almodovar's trademark since his mid-'90s reinvention." -- Grade: A- 11/19/2009

Entertainment Weekly
"A vibrant, mature love letter to the making of movies, the meaning of movies, and the dark-eyed muse Penelope Cruz..." -- Grade: A- 11/27/2009

Box Office
4 stars out of 5 -- "[R]avishing to watch. It's a sheer indulgence for Almodóvar and just as indulgent for his fans." 11/24/2009

Los Angeles Times
"The writer-director is up to his old tricks, creating an onion of an experience -- a movie within a movie within a movie, irony in each layer, poignancy that stings and whimsy that bites." 12/11/2009

Chicago Sun-Times
4 stars out of 4 -- "BROKEN EMBRACES is a voluptuary of a film, drunk on primary colors, caressing Penelope Cruz, using the devices of Hitchcock to distract us with surfaces while the sinister uncoils beneath." 12/16/2009

Chicago Sun-Times
Included in Chicago Sun-Times's "The Best Foreign Films Of 2009" -- "Dripping with primary colors, especially red, this is the year's most sumptuous film." 12/27/2009

Washington Post
"This is Cruz and Almodovar's fourth movie together, and it's a dizzyingly intricate genre-bender that expands upon the Spanish auteur's recurring obsession with movie love..." 12/18/2009

Uncut
3 stars out of 5 -- "The film takes in an opulently shot interlude on Lanzarote, as well as nods to Hitchcock...Warhol's paintings and Almodovar's own early style." 08/24/2009

Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
Pedro Almodovar loves the movies with lust and abandon and the skill of an experienced lover. Broken Embraces is a voluptuary of a film, drunk on primary colors, caressing Penelope Cruz, using the devices of a Hitchcock to distract us with surfaces while the sinister uncoils beneath. As it ravished me, I longed for a freeze frame to allow me to savor a shot...The movie confesses its obsession upfront. It is about seeing. A blind man asks a woman to describe herself. Since we can see her perfectly well, one purpose of this scene is to allow us to listen to her. How to describe the body, the hair, the eyes? Movies are really about the human body more than anything else. I was recently faulted for lingering overmuch on Ingrid Bergman's lips in Casablanca. Anyone, man or woman, who doesn't want to linger on Ingrid Bergman's lips is telling us something about themselves we'd rather not know...The blind man is Harry Caine (Lluis Homar). Harry Lime and Citizen Kane, get it? Both played by Orson Welles, the great man of the cinema. Welles, whose Magnificent Ambersons was infamously botched by being re-edited in his absence. Harry Caine is the name Mateo Blanco takes after being blinded in an automobile accident. Perhaps only he knows why. As Blanco, he directed a film named Girls and Suitcases. It was produced by a man named Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez). Harry/Mateo hates Martel for reasons that will be explored...Mention must be made of red. Almodovar, who always favors bright primary colors, drenches this film in red: In the clothing, the decor, the lipstick, the artwork, the furnishings -- everywhere he can. Red, the color of passion and blood. Never has he made a film more visually pulsating, and Almodovar is not shy...Penelope Cruz has been Almodovar's constant muse since Live Flesh (1997). Never has she been more clearly the brush he uses, the canvas he covers, and the subject of his painting. To see this film once is to experience his deliberate abandon. To see it twice, as I've been able to, is to understand that his style embodies his subject. That subject is: Film and life rush ahead so heedlessly that the frames are past before we can contemplate them. - Roger Ebert