Almodóvar thinks about the limits of creation in 'Bitter Christmas', a 'truncated' and not very captivating film; g1 already seen

Scene from "Bitter Christmas", a new film by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, which reflects on artistic work and the limits of creation.
Disclosure.
Almodóvar turns the camera on himself, again.
In his 24th feature film, "Bitter Christmas", the 76-year-old Spanish director makes his return to Spanish after two years of the release of "The Room Next Door", a film spoken in English with Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.
"Bitter Christmas" made its international debut in the official selection of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, last Tuesday (19). The film hits Brazilian cinemas on May 28.
By returning to his native language and Spain - the setting for his entire filmography -, the filmmaker puts his memories and his own career on the couch, in a kind of autobiographical inflection.
The promise and premise surrounding the project were great: this would be the film in which he would be most cruel to himself, according to interviews. A work in which the director was willing to go to court against himself. That was the idea, the result...not much.
Film within the film
The film follows the story of two filmmakers obsessed with work: Elsa (played by Bárbara Lennie) and Raúl (played by Leonardo Sbaraglia), who can be "read" as an alter ego of Almodóvar.
Elsa is a director who, after not having achieved success on screen, ended up moving into the advertising market. He lost his mother about a year ago and is trying to work through his grief amid migraine attacks, anxiety attacks, a fight with a friend (Victoria Luengo) and a relationship with a firefighter-stripper (Bonifácio, played by Patrick Criado).
Raúl, on the other hand, is a prestigious director who finds himself in a creative limbo. He tries to bring to life a new script "inspired" by the stories and loves of his assistant, Mônica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), while leaving his personal life completely aside.
This metalanguage about artistic creation is nothing new in his filmography. Almodóvar has explored it before in works such as "The Law of Desire" (1987), "Bad Education" (2004) and "Pain and Glory" (2019), which also featured filmmakers as the great protagonists of their own pain.
The big joke this time is that we are facing the creator and the creature, all at once. Elsa's journey is fiction itself being shaped by Raúl's mind, in a dynamic that leaves us watching a film within another.
And that's where things get tough: the two narratives run in parallel, jumping between 2004 and 2026, transforming one character into another, sometimes even one character into two. All in a very "truncated" way.
The spectator needs to make an effort not to get lost and to be able to understand, in this great game of mirrors, who is who. Who or which characters are inspiring who. And more: how much of Almodóvar himself is there.
"Bitter Christmas", a new film by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, hits Brazilian cinemas on May 28.
Disclosure
Ironic and beautiful to watch
The film delivers exactly what one expects from an "almodrama" (a term used by Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante to describe an Almodovar melodrama) in terms of aesthetics: beautiful framing, exquisite art direction.
As a spectator, you are always eager to see the next scenario. Mesmerized by the blue bottles, the yellow armchairs, the red coats. Everything is in place. Nothing is left.
The director also showed that he didn't lose his hand in dosing the drama with hints of humor here and there. Like when the assistant and faithful squire Mônica teases Raúl (or was it Almodóvar himself?): "Get out of the house for a while! You've already made your best films, you can live off your prestige now."
And he also gives other winks to the viewer, later on: "Why don't you give in and make a film for streaming? Netflix has been crazy about you for years." Raúl doesn't give in and denies it.


Courageous in trying to be better than he already was
Throughout the entire plot, Almodóvar puts into the mouths of his characters reflections that he himself has come across throughout his career: the fear of decadence, the lack of creativity, the difficulty of finding new stories, the challenge of being better than he once was.
The film also raises another, very interesting question: to what extent does an artist have the right to use other people's lives to create his own? works?
In the official synopsis of the plot, the protagonist is described as someone "capable of selling his soul to the devil as long as he continues to see the vertical line, the blinking cursor of the computer, alive, which will lead him to write a story that not even he himself knows and for which he is willing to do anything".
In the face of all these clashes, real life always seems to dismantle the filmmaker's control.
And it must be recognized: Almodóvar is bold in proposing this type of reflection on what he made of himself throughout his life, shedding light on the type of art he produced and, mainly, what the human cost of this creation was.
Poster in Portuguese of "Bitter Christmas", Almodóvar's new film.
Disclosure
Honest, but no mucho
He slips, however, by not going all the way to the ultimate consequences. The feeling that remains is that the Spanish director, nevertheless, hand-picked the best cuts and questions for which he would already have comfortable answers to give.
This is not about demanding that the filmmaker do a public therapy session or self-flagellate himself in front of the screen, but see: the expectation was created by himself.
The filmmakers (Raúl, Elsa and the Spanish director himself) admit, in fact, that they are struggling to find a new story that will give them back the excitement and pleasure of filming.
But the three are placed in the plot as people who are writing not because they know what they want to say, but because they need to find out.
By avoiding the deep dive that he himself proposed, the director delivers an exercise in metalanguage that needs more honesty. There's no way not to notice it.
Critical review card g1
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Source: G1

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