There aren’t many directors who would garner applause just for the appearance of their name at the start of a film’s opening credits. At the Cannes Film Festival, “una pelicula de Pedro Almodóvar” is enough to do just that, a reminder that few filmmakers carry quite that weight of accumulated goodwill. Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad) does enough to justify the affection, even if it doesn’t quite earn a full standing ovation.
It’s a metafictional film-within-a-film, structured across two timelines set two decades apart. The A storyline in 2004 follows Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), a director of commercials who bristles at being called a cult filmmaker (she made two unsuccessful films with a small but devoted fanbase, she’ll have you know) whose life quietly unravels in the aftermath of her mother’s death. The B storyline in the present day concerns Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a celebrated film director of a certain age, clearly Almodóvar’s most direct stand-in since Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory, striving to write a screenplay drawn from the lives of those closest to him. The two strands fit neatly together, intricately constructed by the director and editor Teresa Font.
At times, it feels like vintage Almodóvar. That colour palette is his distinctive signature and remains completely unrivalled, every scene a carefully composed riot of clashing hues, those trademark yellows and reds. Paco Delgado’s costume design slots effectively into the Almodóvar vision, as does Antxón Gómez’s production design. The film opens strongly, establishing its dual timelines and their emotional stakes with real confidence, and there are some great scenes as Elsa’s backstory is revealed, how she’s wound up dating the brilliantly named Beau, aka Bonifacio (Patrick Criado), after meeting him, not on Tinder, but at a friend’s hen do where he was the stripper.
The performances are particularly strong. Sbaraglia brings warmth to a character that could have been crotchety and uninspired, and Lennie is superb throughout. Milena Smit, who did a stellar job in Parallel Mothers, brings a raw fragility to Natalia, a friend retreating from a devastating loss, and Patrick Criado manages to make Beau particularly charming. Rossy de Palma also arrives in a frenzy of pure colour and dominates every scene she’s in, but that’s par for the course with Almodóvar; she often feels like an actor tailor-made for his specific vision.
The film’s middle section goes slightly soft and doesn’t hold your attention with the same vigour as its first scenes. It’s here that the metafictional architecture – Raúl writing Elsa, Elsa becoming a writer herself – grows a touch mechanical. The central question the film is asking: Does an artist have the right to mine the suffering of those closest to him? – is a genuinely fascinating one and clearly a question Almodóvar has been asking himself, but at this point, the film doesn’t quite press on it hard enough. It risks a descent into melodrama or something closer to soap opera territory.
Fortunately, the film is rescued by a truly superb final thirty minutes. Predominantly set in a park, this is where Amarga Navidad earns everything it has been quietly working towards. The dialogue in this closing scene, between Raúl and Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) – Raúl’s friend and the inspiration for Elsa, who detests being used as inspo for his latest script – is brilliant. It plays out for a long time but never outstays its welcome. Every exchange lands with the full weight of what preceded it. It is, without exaggeration, some of the best-written dialogue in any film at this year’s festival, the power-play of their very public argument sparking enigmatically, and is among some of Almodóvar’s best work.
Flawed in its middle and brilliant at its edges, Bitter Christmas proves impactful. For a Cannes darling working in his own very particular register, Almodóvar can do little wrong here. When he does let you in, as he does in those final minutes, the results are as good as anything he has ever made.
★★★
In UK cinemas on August 28th / Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit, Rossy de Palma / Dir: Pedro Almodóvar / El Deseo, Warner Bros. Pictures
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