Almodóvar directed Pain and Glory (Dolor y gloria), a film starring Antonio Banderas as a gay Spanish filmmaker named Salvador Mallo, who reflects on his life and career.
Almodóvar, 70 when he made the film, a living auteur whose productions have moved the needle internationally for LGBTQ visibility over the past four decades.
Gay Directors, Gay Films? By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press).
Pain and Glory is the director’s most personal work yet, a reflection on the power of cinema to address personal and political crises — not to mention the complicated and necessary relationship between a director and an actor, and an artist and his muse.
It’s a great companion piece to his other personal film, the 2004 Bad Education.
The film is also notable for being one of Banderas’s finest performances, one for which he earned his first Best Actor Oscar nominations, and many critics’ kudos.
Photo: Almodóvar with Cruz and Banderas at the 2020 Goya Awards.
As played by Banderas, the director is suffering from chronic illnesses and writer’s blocks as he reflects on his life in flashbacks to his childhood.
A regular presence in the director’s work, Penelope Cruz plays Jacinta, the mother of the aging director, in the film’s flashbacks.
Gay Directors, Gay Films? By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press, August 2015)
Pain and Glory was released in Spain on March 22, 2019 by Sony Pictures Releasing.
It was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
The film was nominated for the Best International Feature Film Oscar, though it ultimately lost to Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.
