Broken Embraces…now available in DVD and Blu Ray by Karla Vadillo
While I watched Pedro Almodóvar last night, when he presented an award with Quentin Tarantino…my mind could not help drifting to the evening we met in Mexico City. I was in college and working as a hostess of the most exclusive sports bar and restaurant in that city back then…when a friend of mine who has a very peculiar laughter grabbed my hand and told me I just had to meet his friend Pedro Almodóvar.
My image of a film director was like we now see Eli Roth’s “award look”: hair pulled back and plastered with gel, Fellini style. That was my mental image of a film director and when I gave a long look at Pedro…he did not look like this at all! So, being in my early twenties, I laughed at him, giggled and said, “Oh, come on…you´re not him!” and even when he replied “que sí soy!” (I am!)…I went away and left him laughing real hard and my friends waving me to come back to their table.
When I turned on my television set to the watch the news the next day, I wanted the earth beneath my feet to swallow me since…they where transmitting a movies press conference and I realized that I had met Mr. Almodóvar and told him, he was not Pedro Almodóvar! Well, today I´m pleased that he keeps surprising me with films like Broken Embraces where we have the delight to see again Academy Award® winner Penélope Cruz (2009 Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role Vicky Cristina Barcelona; Volver) one of her muses, portray Lena.
This is the story of a man who takes on a new identity in an attempt to forget his tragic past. Now, Harry Caine lives in the darkness while Mateo Blanco, fourteen years ago lived a remarkable love affair with the star of his last movie using that name. He fell madly in love with Lena but she was not on her own. Lena had decided years before - what she thought was a bright and kind move- to become the mistress of a millionaire, Ernesto Martel. She lived in golden cage that could not wait to abandon, once she found herself in Mateo´s embrace.
Diego, the son of Harry´s secretary, wants to put all the pieces together to help Harry and her mother move on and free them from the cage that Diego feels they are in. The story is of love, dominated by fatality, jealousy, the abuse of power, treachery, and an accute guilt complex. It is a compelling, moving and tragic story. The most expressive image of this is the photo of two lovers embracing, torn into a thousand pieces.
Broken Embraces is written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, and the extra material on the DVD and Blu Ray includes: deleted scenes, a Pedro directing Penélope Cruz featurette, a Variety Q&A interview with Penélope, “The Cannibalistic Councillor” (La Concejala Antropófaga) – an original short film by Pedro Almodóvar, etc.
