‘Dolor y gloria‘ (‘Pain and glory‘) has been described by many viewers and critics as ‘Pedro Almodóvar‘s most personal film’. It is, to me, a slightly strange definition, because all the films of the great directors are to a lesser or greater extent ‘personal’ and this is all the more true in the case of Almodóvar, whose personality, style and perspective about the world are so evident in about all his movies. More correctly, it seems to me that ‘Dolor y gloria‘ belongs to the category of those films with an explicit auto-biographical character, which some of the great directors make either towards the end of their careers, or in respite and inflection moments, bringing themselves as the main heroes of the stories unfolding on the screen. Almodóvar is in good company from this point of view, with directors such as Fellini or Woody Allen among the guild colleagues who created alter-ego characters, movie makers in breaks or creative crises, with their diseases, neuroses, loves and especially with their memories.
The story that Almodóvar brings to the screen in this film is very sincere and at the same time delicate and elegant. These latter qualities are a relative novelty in his films. This time the eccentric characters are missing, so are the extreme situations that with his art Almodóvar explained and brought to us at the level of human understanding in other films. The main character, Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) is a famous screenwriter and director, who is caught up by age and illness, but especially of memories. The cinematheque screening of one of his successful films 32 years after the premiere gives him the chance to meet his favorite actor, with whom he had broken since the film’s premiere. Physical pain finds an illusory solution in drugs, the creative crisis leads to introspection and the writing of a play that sublimates the memories of childhood and youth. Two love stories come back successively – his first and only true relationship, with a man with whom he shared the years of his youth but had not the power to support him in times of crisis, and the relationship with his mother (Penélope Cruz) to whom he tries to pay back at her old age the love and support he enjoyed during his childhood. But both relationships are ultimately failures, in both of them, Salvador Mallo fails to return to the loved ones the love and support that made his career possible. The personal salvation and the exit from the crisis are possible only by his returning to creation. This is the personal price paid by many artists.
Antonio Banderas creates an exceptional role in this film. His Salvador Mallo is also Almodóvar but he also has a life and personality of his own. Men who are on the verge of the old age, with their crises and fears, with their pains and neuroses, with the memories and the sufferings these bring back, now have a reference role on screen. On the other hand, I was a little disappointed with Penélope Cruz, for the first time maybe. It may not be her fault, maybe in the role of younger Jacinta, Almodóvar fails this time precisely where he has succeeded so many times in the past, in creating a memorable female character.’Dolor y gloria‘ is a beautiful and sensitive film, but it risks to disappoint those fans of Almodóvar who are used to find in his films not only beauty but also eccentricity. It is missing here. I do not know if the crisis of the main character in the film reflects a personal crisis of the director himself. But I hope that far from being an end point in his career, ‘Dolor y gloria‘ will be followed by other films bearing the master’s unmistakable imprint.