Broken embraces

Alex O. Scott gives a pitch perfect review to the latest Almodovar movie, "Broken Embraces":

"...the most direct and striking dialogue the movie conducts with a filmmaker from the past is with Pedro Almodóvar himself. Aficionados will recognize “Girls and Suitcases,” bits of which turn up in “Broken Embraces,” most powerfully at the end, as a replica of “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” Mr. Almodóvar’s marvelous madcap comedy from 1988. Its appearance is not vanity or clever self-quotation. Rather, the director’s pastiche of his early, funny work becomes, in the context of this somber new film, a poignant reflection on aging and loss. To catch a glimpse of “Women” in the mirror of “Embraces” is to see how cinematic images can be both tangible and ghostly.

And also — literally in the case of Harry Caine and “Girls and Suitcases” — invisible to their maker, who is no longer the man he was. He has lost so much over the years. Every one of us has, and if Mr. Almodóvar has grown wise enough to understand that art is a dreadfully inadequate compensation, he is still generous enough to offer it to us anyway. "