Broken Embraces

Drama from acclaimed director Pedro Almodovar, starring Penelope Cruz and Lluis Homar. Mateo Blanco (Homar) is a scriptwriter who was in a terrbile car accident 14 years ago that killed the woman he loved, Lena (Cruz), and blinded him. Since then he has gone under the name Harry Caine, choosing to forget his past and the accident, which he never talks about. One night he is required to look after his production manager Judit (Blanca Portillo)'s son Diego (Tamar Novas), after he hurts himself. During the time they spend together until Judit returns, Diego asks about when Harry was called Mateo and so Harry decides to tell the boy the story of his painful past, presenting it as fiction in an attempt to keep Diego entertained. Through his recollections we discover the intense and complex relationships that existed between Mateo, Lena, Judit and Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez). AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW
Pedro Almodóvar continues to reinvent Hollywood's Golden Age for a new era with Broken Embraces. A blind screenwriter in the present day, Mateo Blanco, a.k.a. Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), reminisces about his favourite leading lady to his assistant, Diego (Tamar Novas). In 1992, when Caine met Lena (Penélope Cruz), stockbroker Ernesto (José Luis Gómez) had just made the cash-strapped secretary his mistress. First, Ernesto pays for her mother's medical care; then he supports her dream to act. In the process, Caine casts her in his screwball comedy and falls in love, and a passionate affair begins. Ernesto suspects something is up, so he hires his shifty son, Ernesto Jr. (the off-key Rubén Ochandiano), to film the couple surreptitiously, and a lip reader translates their conversations. Caine's production manager, Judit (Volver's Blanca Portillo), further complicates the scenario. By the end, Caine, whose name serves as a tip of the hat to hard-boiled author James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice), has lost his vision and his girl, and the culprit isn't as obvious as it seems. With Embraces, Almodóvar riffs on Tinseltown classics where greed and lust lead to death. If less successful than Live Flesh, a prior noir, his jigsaw storytelling remains just as riveting and his principal cast rises to the occasion, particularly Cruz, who plays a more passive character than usual and remains, much like Otto Preminger's Laura before her, a mystery that no one, not even the filmmaker, can ever completely solve.--Kathleen C. Fennessy,
Stills from Broken Embraces (Click for larger image)

Special Features

Bonus Footage, Deleted Scenes, Image Gallery, Making of Documentary, Audio Description English, short film, Trailers

Actors: Tamar Novas, Marta Aledo, Ruben Ochandiano, Agustín Almodóvar, Blanca Portillo, Lluís Homar, Penélope Cruz, Javier Coll, Sergio Diaz, José Luis Gómez

Audio Languages: Spanish

Duration: 122 minutes

Number of Discs: 1

Subtitle Languages: English

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