Broken Embraces (2009)

Beautiful-looking film that otherwise, surprisingly, falls flat.

I'm not quite sure what's going wrong here. I'd say that, in general, I'm an Almodovar fan: the four I've reviewed on this site (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Talk to Her, Bad Education, and Volver) were graded B, A, A-, and A- respectively.

Here, however, the story is downright boring. The bulk of the film is a flashback to a heady romance between a director and his young starlet, who happens to be the kept woman of the film's producer, all while the producer's icky son spies on their relationship, complete with video camera, at the behest of his father. That sounds exciting, no? No. I'm not sure how it got so lifeless and predictable, but it did. Quite the disappointment.

C