The maestro of melodrama, Pedro Almodóvar, is currently making some of the finest films of his storied career – during his run from 2016’s Julieta onwards the Spanish icon has applied a strict “bangers only” policy to his creative output, and his scintillating new one, Bitter Christmas, abides by that self-set edict. Like all autofiction worth its salt, the film is a supremely self-lacerating study of the people we hurt (and, more specifically, the complex ways in which we hurt them) when parlaying their personal traumas into juicy fiction.
Rather than move towards a conventional climax, this is a sombre, tactile drama focusing on the ethics of storytelling that slowly peels back its dense layers until, eventually, Almodóvar decides to give himself an excoriating (and breathtaking!) dressing-down. It operates as a partner piece to 2019’s Pain and Glory, again directly addressing the idea that if you’re not seriously pissing off at least a few people, then the art you’re making is probably not massively worthwhile.
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And so to the story of Bárbara Lennie’s Elsa, a one-time cult filmmaker whose indie flop landed her in corporate-advertising purgatory. It’s a sideline for which she’s not too dismissive, mainly because it allowed her to hook up with avuncular beefcake Bonifacio (Patrick Criado), a firefighter by day, but who also has his own little side hustle as a male stripper on the hen party circuit. Elsa casts Bonifacio in a TV ad for underwear and the pair strike up a relationship. She immerses herself in the world of Madrid’s media elite while he falls into the role of trusty lapdog.
The story kicks off with Elsa heading to the emergency room in the midst of dealing with a splitting migraine – an affliction that has come on suddenly and she has no real idea why. The film isn’t particularly interested in the medical ramifications of Elsa’s migraines, though they do kick-start a period of existential reflection where the acknowledgement of physical fallibility makes the institutionalised filmmaker think that she should go back to making art for herself once more, even if it didn’t go particularly well the first time.
It’s probably worth saying no more about the story, though there is a clever framing device that supplies innumerable insights into the tactics used by screenwriters when it comes to hiding their own concerns inside their work. As Elsa decides to spend more time with her friends – whose lives are in various states of ruin – we’re forced to question how sincere she’s being as a shoulder to cry on, as there’s the chance she may just be out there farming for spicy material to purloin for her next script. With its moving musical interludes, comic patter and outrageously chic production design, Bitter Christmas is another dazzling, late-period jewel.
