Deep into the layered folds of Pedro Almodóvar’s atmospheric and powerful new film Pain and Glory, a typically stylish and slyly semi-autobiographical entry in the director’s filmography, our aging director protagonist (Antonio Banderas) utters a mantra-like statement: “Cinema saved me.” In his own way, the sensual iconoclast Almodóvar has helped saved cinema.
The legendary Spanish director/auteur, whose acclaimed new film is the epicenter of a retrospective series at the Riviera Theatre starting this weekend, is, at age 70, both timely and timeless. Pain and Glory is a triumphant late-period, valedictory self-reflection, sometimes evocative of a quieter, gentler variation on Fellini’s artfully navel-gazing cinematic tour de force 8½.
Unlike many of his peers in the upper echelon of living directors, Almodóvar’s rare blend of aesthetics, melodrama, stylistic audacity, and new ways of dealing with the human condition has allowed his work to gain traction in both the film festival/arthouse orbit and the more populist movie-house world.