2023-08-23 09:59:35
Sheriff in a small town in the Far West, Jake sees Silva arrive one day. A slightly exuberant-looking cowboy, who had been her lover a quarter of a century earlier. The reunion turns out to be warm between the two men, but Silva came with a goal in mind…
Pedro Almodovar’s new work, “Strange Way of Life”, presented out of competition at the last Cannes Film Festival, hits cinemas in the middle of August. But as it is a medium-length film, which barely exceeds half an hour, it is offered as a double program. “The Almodovar Experience”, in dark rooms, with “The Human Voice”, another short fiction by the same author.
“Strange Way of Life” is more than the gay western previewed by a few happy Cannes aficionados. It is also and above all Almodovar’s response to the American film “The Secret of Brokeback Mountain” by Ang Lee (2005), starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, which won 3 Oscars. A feature film on which the Spanish director had worked, before giving up, not ready to make the compromises that, according to him, would not have failed to require his Hollywood producers.
A story full of tenderness
Since then, the author of “Madres paralelas” (2021) had hinted that his own version would have been much more radical and full of sex. It is quite possible, but not necessarily obvious from the vision of “Strange Way of Life”, an interesting male romance but which will only make people talk within die-hard fundamentalist or homophobic circles.
The love story between the two men, played by Pedro Pascal (hero of the series “The Mandalorian” and “The Last of Us”) and Ethan Hawke (the extraordinary “Black Phone”, last year), s finally turns out to be full of tenderness. The rest of the plot seems almost secondary in comparison, and ends anyway, abruptly, where a more developed fiction would have started to gain momentum. Damage…
Editor’s note:
“Strange Way of Life”, Spanish western by Pedro Almodovar, with Pedro Pascal, Ethan Hawke, Manu Rios… 31 minutes.
Editor’s note:
“The Human Voice”, Spanish drama by Pedro Almodovar (2020), with Tilda Swinton, Agustin Almodovar, Miguel Almodovar… 30 minutes.
“Strange Way of Life” however remains much more gripping than “La Voix humaine”, another medium-length film, dating from 2020. Freely adapted from the eponymous play written in 1930 by Jean Cocteau, it mainly gives rise to a performance of actress Tilda Swinton, almost alone on screen to describe the moods of a woman abandoned by her lover. This first fiction ever shot in English by the director, who unveiled it at the Venice Film Festival in 2020, remains very classic in form, apart from a rather tasty sequence in a DIY store.
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