Legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodovar takes a semi-autobiographical look back at his childhood, first love and movies in Pain and Glory.
It's enjoyable without the mad inventiveness of his earlier films, says Simon Morris.
Simon Morris: In a year when films are products of all too obvious formulae, our hopes rest on the works of veteran directors we admire.
Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg… generally, the critics are so grateful they're still around they tend to shower them with end-of career laurel wreaths.
The latest film by Spain's most famous and loved film-maker, Pedro Almodovar, is not only about this phenomenon, it also benefits a bit from it.
In Pain and Glory, the veteran director Salvador is played by Almodovar's long-time star and muse Antonio Banderas.
Salvador is clearly modelled on the director himself - the name is a near-anagram - though the differences are as marked as the similarities.
Like Almodovar, Salvador is prey to various ailments, including galloping hypochondria, you suspect. Unlike him, he's hamstrung by writer's block.
One day he's invited to a revival of his most famous film, along with its star, Alberto.
The problem is that Salvador and Alberto split acrimoniously after that shoot and haven't spoken for 32 years.
They meet and decide to patch things up for the sake of the reputation of the film.
To seal the deal, Alberto introduces Salvador to the pleasures of heroin. This is a Pedro Almodovar film after all…
But compared to some of the excesses and delights of previous Almodovar films, Pain and Glory is a rather more muted experience, though still rich with his trademark sensuous colours and vivid design.
The heroin acts as a sort of Proustian madeleine inviting memories of Salvador's lost past.
That's another regular figure in an Almodovar film - Penelope Cruz playing the director's mother as an earthy peasant, singing and washing by the river.
Later Salvador would use his mother and her friends as source material for his movies, a practice they often resented as disrespectful.
Childhood, first desire, memories of early film shoots and life in Madrid in the 1980s with his first true love Federico…
Pain and Glory is the sort of film that a director tends to make when he grows older - looking back on the past obsessively, wondering if repeating the events will somehow change their meaning.
The critics have been generally ecstatic about Pain and Glory, though I found it difficult to join them whole-heartedly.
I enjoyed the film, certainly, but I missed the mad inventiveness of some of Almodovar's early films.
Maybe it was simply a personal reaction. So often, one man's "towering masterpiece" is another's "it was all right, I suppose".
The best things for me were Penelope Cruz as a washerwoman and Salvador's colourful kitchen. These don't sound like the reactions to the best film of the year.
