Pain and Glory (Dolor y gloria)

About

Director: Pedro Almodóvar (Spain, 2019)
Certification: 15 | 1 h 53 min | Drama | Language: Spanish with English subtitles

A film director reflects on the choices he's made in life as past and present come crashing down around him. Pain and Glory tells of a series of re-encounters experienced by Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), a film director in his physical decline. Some of them in the flesh, others remembered: his childhood in the 60s, when he emigrated with his parents to a village in Valencia in search of prosperity, the first desire, his first adult love in the Madrid of the 80s, the pain of the breakup of that love while it was still alive and intense, writing as the only therapy to forget the unforgettable, the early discovery of cinema, and the void, the infinite void that creates the incapacity to keep on making films.

Pain and Glory can be considered the third part of a spontaneously created trilogy that has taken thirty two years to complete. The first two parts are Law of Desire (1987) and Bad Education (2004). In the three films, the protagonists are male characters who are film directors, and desire and cinematic fiction are the pillars of the story, but the way in which fiction is glimpsed alongside reality differs in each one of them.
This is the 21st full-length feature film of Pedro Almodóvar as a Director and one of many collaborations with Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and Julieta Serrano. The film was nominated to both Bafta and Academy Awards 2020 for Best Film Not in the English Language and Best International Feature Film, respectively; among several other nominations and awards, including winning seven Goyas in 2020 and the nomination in 2019 for the Palme d'Or in Cannes.

★★★★ "Banderas is immense but tiny. His performance is world-weary and downcast, trying to reconcile himself with his past while not having the strength to deal with the present" – Empire

"A story of memory and creation, youth and its loss, "Pain and Glory" circles around the idea of art as self-creation" – The New York Times

With support from the BFI Film Audience Network (BFI FAN) awarding funds from The National Lottery.