My Broken Embraces.

                                                        

By Daniel Salazar

“I’ve seen other films by Almodovar which were more meaningful in less amount of time”

Harry Caine, is a blind writer, who works with Judit and her son Diego, Caine is actually Mateo Blanco. He begins using Harry Caine as an alias after losing his sight in a car accident. News arrive of the death of corrupt stockbroker Ernesto Martel, who once produced a movie Mateo directed called “Girls and suitcases”

A pretentious man named Ray X, who is actually Ernesto Martel’s son, asks Harry to work with him on a story which Ray wants to direct. The story of a young man, son of a millionaire lady with no scruples, a son which was worried about art and had talent to be an artist, never accepted by his father. When his father died, his son wished upon burning his name so he could have his vengeance and get rid of his father’s memories.

The film now goes back to 1992 where Martel falls in love with his secretary, a wanna-be actress turned into a prostitute. He and Lena become a couple in 1994. However, when Lena auditions for “Girls and Suitcases” Blanco also falls in love with her.

It is very noticeable how Almodovar links films inside films, his stories have always had a close relationship to theatre or films, and the lives of the characters that have that kind of lifestyle, approaching his characters closely in the story of a film, inside another film.

 Tonino Guerra is mentioned in the movie, which to me is one of the greatest writers in the Italian film industry, especially in Italian Neorealism of 1940s and 50s, which I really liked.

Broken Embraces to me is similar to Federico Fellini’s 8 ½, Elevator to the Gallows of Louis Malle, personally to me because of the settings, scenery and takes but keeping it at the same fun level. Timing barely changes but it takes us away, this could’ve been hard to the expectation.

At last, in my opinion Broken Embraces is about loves of the cinema world of Almodovar the blending of the 7^th art with average lives, the reflexion of society shows us the difference of good and bad films in a film itself in their own version of other films. It’s also about a man who neglected his past or tried to and took more than 14 years to face it and make it right. Mateo ends up being a better character.  I think it’s explainable why not to ignore Fascist dictatorships and make it right.

 It seems to tell us no to ignore but to become better characters, everyone has had embraces wishing they would be forever when I the end these are broken. Broken Embraces is not only about troubled love affairs but about the responsibility to finish everything we get started everything, every new journey even in the blind.