If anyone was fated to play Pedro Almodóvar’s mother in a meta biopic of his life, it could have been none other than Penélope Cruz, who has been so instrumental in the language of Almodóvar filmography over these past few decades, that it’s difficult to imagine a period in his career without her–starting with her first appearance in his canon in 1997’s Trembling Flesh (followed up with roles in All About My Mother [1999], Volver [2006], Broken Embraces [2009], The Cannibalistic Councillor [2009] and I’m So Excited! [2013]). Slipping into the part of Jacinta Mallo, mother to Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), an auteur experiencing creative and physical decay (the former caused by the latter), Cruz is the anchor to Salvador’s often heroin-induced memories. And, to be sure, there can be no Almodóvar film without “Mother” as a focal point of the narrative, whether directly or as a result of the effect she’s had on her progeny.
Salvador’s reflections upon the past are further augmented when he’s contacted by a film festival seeking to restore and remaster one of his older films from thirty years ago, Sabor, and have him present it to audiences with the lead actor. They make no allusion to having any idea that Salvador has not spoken to Alberto Crespo (Asier Etxeandia) for the same amount of time since the movie’s debut–this being a nod to Almodóvar’s own falling out with Banderas after Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, the last Almodóvar picture that Banderas appeared in for quite some time after turning down a part in Kika in favor of the more commercial The Mambo Kings. Of Banderas’ decision, Almodóvar told him, “Hollywood will break you, you’ll waste your talent. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Thus, the basis for the dynamic between Alberto and Salvador. The bond of which is quickly repaired after Salvador’s sudden reappearance in his life once heroin serves as the glue to meld it back together. For when an unembarrassed Alberto announces his plan to smoke it in front of him, Salvador says he would like to try it as well. Though he had seen his fair share of addiction in the 80s (spawning the stream of consciousness soliloquy that turns out to be a piece called Addiction, which Alberto is insistent upon turning into a play), Salvador could never have known this was the feeling that they were talking about. The one that made all the pain–emotional and physical–just melt away and with it any cares about whatever people in one’s life might be alienated by the “habit” a.k.a. dependency. Yet, incidentally, there appears to be no glory to accompany it as there is with the efforts put into cinema.
Depicted with the same effects as some directors might reserve for acid, with heroin, the colors and memories of Salvador’s life become more vivid. The feeling of serene comfort, like being in the womb, is foreshadowed in the first moments of Pain and Glory, as Almodóvar gives us what must be, for a cinephile such as himself, a clear nod to The Graduate as Salvador floats resignedly at the bottom of a pool. A close-up on his scar (based on Almodóvar’s own back operation souvenir) reminds one of a certain quote from the little appreciated Interview, directed by Steve Buscemi, in which his character, Pierre, asks his interview subject, Katya (Sienna Miller), “What makes a man attractive?” She asserts, “A scar.” “Why?” he asks. Shruggingly she returns, “Because most women have one too.” The scar on Salvador’s back is from a recent operation for his constantly aching spine. Though this physical pain seems no match for the emotional traumas of his past. Including, but not limited to, creative differences, the loss of his one great love, the loss of his mother and an education that was fraught at best and shoddy at worst. For Salvador himself states, “They made me an ignorant.” They being the priests that insisted upon his constant practice of singing for the choir, passing him in all classes despite the fact that he never attended them. But, as he explains during the introduction, he got his own life education in subjects such as geography and anatomy thanks to filmmaking, riddled with its various perks and drawbacks. It is also during the intro that, with Magic Eye-like graphics from Jaun Gatti, we are signaled into a world of semiotics as only highly meticulous directors can fathom living in all the time.
This ability to see things in a certain way that can never be turned off no matter how out of practice one gets is part of what plagues Salvador so. In addition to his increasingly unshakeable flashbacks to a childhood spent living in a cave in a removed part of Valencia, he can’t forget the indelible image of his mother washing linens in the river with the rest of the women in the village, singing an intoxicating version of Lola Flores’ “A Tu Vera” (with Rosalía actually interpreting it in her own up and coming voice). Placing sheets over stock-still in their uprightness plants to dry, the simplicity of life in the village was a contradiction against the hardships of poverty. Still, it was an idyllic youth, one in contrast to the life Salvador would come to lead in Madrid. Particularly in the 80s, when he would meet the love of his life, heroin-addicted Federico (Leonardo Máximo Sbaraglia). Life “in the ring,” as he describes it in the requisite Spaniard’s bullfighting vernacular, proved too much to bear at times. But it was also through this pain that he achieved the glory of creating some of his best work. In the end, it is, for Salvador, the greatest addiction of all. As Almodóvar puts it, “His dependence is on telling stories through film. And when he recalls his first desire, he realizes that can save him.” For the true cinephile knows that heroin is, in fact, film. The desire to live in a world in Technicolor, just as Almodóvar paints his own in the shocking color palettes that would never lead viewers to believe he could be the stodgy age of seventy (though sixty-nine at the time of this film’s production and release).
With many critics making parallels to 8 ½–an oversimplification, undoubtedly–to limit Almodóvar’s own auteuric genius to that of someone else’s does him, and his work, a disservice. Yet one manner we can say for certain he is likenable to Fellini is that this self-referential work about directing is not a bookend, but merely yet another jumping off point for future works. “Decrepitude” be damned. The only way to quit art, after all, is to die.
