In its meta-conclusion, Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas” sees the film director, Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), clearly elucidate the film’s thesis. He has long been out of original ideas, yes, but also can’t see a way to keep on living without making films, so why not come back to the themes that have steered him into the loving arms of acclaim? It is a clever maneuver by the Spanish auteur to get ahead of any criticism of his latest, a Frankenstein’s monster stitched from some of his greatest hits and with a pointed focus on regurgitating his most recent work.
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The story starts in 2004 with Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), a failed arthouse filmmaker turned advertising director suffering from recurrent migraines and lovingly tended to by her firefighter-slash-stripper boyfriend Bo (Patrick Criado). She is Raúl’s creation and the conduit for the film’s “Pain and Glory” chapter, a character based on the young director around the time he experienced his first panic attack. Within this film within a film, Almodóvar returns to “The Room Next Door” by broaching the relationship between Elsa and her grief-stricken friend Natalia (Milena Smit), who in turn is based on Raúl’s longtime producer, Mónica (Aitana Sánchez), who bends the film towards the hues of “All About My Mother.”
If this web sounds a tad tangled, it’s because it very much is, and not in the classic Almodovarian sense of fatefully crossed tragedies. “Bitter Christmas” is objectively an Almodóvar film in presentation, from the bright red of a Jeep crossing the black sands of Lanzarote and the cerulean blue of a delicately designed lamp shade and the egg-yolk yellow of one of many neatly-pressed Prada crewnecks, plus the beautifully fashioned, crimson-lipped women who exist in a state of fascinating messiness — and adored by Michelangelo-sculpted men.
But “Bitter Christmas” crucially lacks the most Almodovarian element of all. This pulsating emotional core first presents itself hidden beneath the routines of apparently unconnected characters, until the Spanish director brings down his dramatic axe, culminating in a grand punch of Shakespearean force. Since this tragicomedy is built as a mirror for Almodóvar to reflect on his perceived self-complacency, the focus stays on the metatextual to the detriment of the story. As “Bitter Christmas” zigzags between real-life and fiction, with the latter constantly mutating as Raúl’s pen turns left or right, a permanent sense of vertigo settles in. As satire further clouds the relationships between the characters, all attachment to their woes and plights is drained with it, the film ridding itself of the emotional guardrail that ushers the viewer through this unsteady motion.
Still, despite not being top-shelf Almodóvar, it remains the work of a director long settled into form and, as such, offers its fair share of delights. We have one of the auteur’s great muses, Rossy de Palma, fashioned in an “Annie”-style ginger curly wig and lush emerald green ball gown, pleading with Bo to strip to her hungry artsy friends. Bo itself is a great revelation, played with such delightful charm by Criado, one could almost hear the swoons spilling from the besotted audience.
The film’s central self-deprecation is also highly entertaining. Almodóvar dashes out pointed criticism on how his colleagues see no issue signing up to morally dubious events as long as the mouth-watering paychecks cash in, and uses Raúl as an outspoken avatar to rant about his frustration with streamers, particularly Netflix, which released his lukewarmly received Pedro Pascal/Ethan Hawke western “Strange Way of Life.” Raúl waves his hands in the air in frustration at Mónica, who he believes is doing little to resuscitate their “dying profession” as the producer urges him to stop thinking of the cinema of today as the golden days of yesteryear. If Raúl trims the script for the “Bitter Christmas” script within “Bitter Christmas,” maybe he can turn it into a nifty one-hour special that she can sell.
It might be tempting to throw “Bitter Christmas” alongside Almodóvar’s recent tepid run. But while “The Room Next Door” and “Strange Way of Life” saw the auteur sacrifice some of the flair of his native Spanish to accommodate the English-speaking A-lister roster, his latest at least welcomes him back to the dramatic nuances of his language and culture. A standout scene sees Lennie sitting alongside Victoria Lluengo, whose brilliant breakthrough performance powers Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved,” the two silently welling up as the raspy voice of Mexican singer Chavela Vargas fills the room. She soulfully sings “La Llorona,” speaking of tears shed over her mother’s final kiss and of love abundant, then usurped. The song is a microcosmos of all that crowns Almodóvar’s work, and a poignant reminder of how great he can be. [B-]
Rafa Sales Ross is a Brazilian film journalist, critic and programmer currently living in Scotland. She contributes to Variety, BBC Culture, Sight & Sound among others, and can often be seen writing about Latin American Cinema and explorations of death and desire.
