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Monday, April 19, 2010

BD impressions: Broken Embraces

6:14 PM / BD Impressions / 3 Comments

I loved VOLVER, director Pedro Almodóvar's previous collaboration of Penélope Cruz. In fact, I ranked it number 9 in my Top 10 Films of the Decade list. It was the only Almodóvar I had ever seen, which remained the case until watching BROKEN EMBRACES, which reunites him with Cruz to tell another strange, offbeat tale about love and death. VOLVER was a weird little film, and on the surface of it BROKEN EMBRACES seems weirder still, although once the fractured timeline and the relationships of the various characters reveal themselves, it ultimately turns out to be a somewhat more conventional narrative about a filmmaker who falls for a struggling actress.

It's often said that Cruz is a far better actress when speaking her native Spanish rather than English, and based on the evidence, I'm inclined to agree (watch her in Alejandro Amenábar's excellent OPEN YOUR EYES/ABRE LOS OJOS and then playing the same role in the Hollywood remake, VANILLA SKY - there's no comparison). She was excellent in VOLVER and is very good in this, although the film really belongs to Lluís Homar as director/writer Mateo Blanco/Harry Caine (the latter being the pseudonym he adopted after a serious accident left him blinded), who portrays the character at two different stages in his life, before and after a tragedy that has major ramifications for his outlook on life. That said, neither he nor Cruz can quite make the romance that develops between their two characters seem entirely plausible. Perhaps it's down to the fractured nature of the narrative, which jumps back and forth between different time periods, but it just seems to come out of nowhere, and while the pair do have chemistry, something seems to be lacking. I was ultimately left with a sense that Mateo/Harry's relationship with Cruz's charater, Lena, wasn't all that far removed from that of the wealthy industrialist with whom she lives due, we are invited to assume, to his paying for life-saving medical treatment for her father.

BROKEN EMBRACES is an eclectic film. Part romance, part whodunit, part exposé of the film business, it has its finger in several different pies and the various elements don't always come together satisfyingly: when the final scene came around, I was left with a feeling that only part of the narrative was being wrapped up in a meaningful way. It's worth it, though, for the sumptuous photography, the slick sense of pace, and of course Penélope Cruz.

Image quality: An extremely impressive showing from Sony Pictures, and one that if very hard to criticise on any level. The anamorphic photography has a certain inherent softness, but I doubt anything untoward is going on here: this is simply how the film looks. No, it doesn't have the "pop" that many seem to expect from every single BD release, but it looks like unmolested film throughout, and in that regard I can't see anyone having a valid reason to complain. 9.5/10

Broken Embraces
studio: Sony Pictures; country: USA; region code: A; codec: AVC;
file size: 29.6 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 33.27 Mbit/sec

3 Comments

 
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