Broken Embraces

His name was Mateo Blanco and he used to be a film director. After he loses his sight and the woman he loved in a tragic accident, he becomes a writer and assumes the pseudonym Harry Caine. His agent Judith looks after him devotedly and her son Diego helps him out as his assistant. Lena is the secretary of the powerful businessman Ernesto Martel, to whom she is indebted for helping her sick father. Ernesto has a son who wants to become a director. He shows the script to Harry, but is rejected. These are the characters Pedro Almodóvar introduces during the first part of his new film. The complex story spread over several time frames focuses on Lena who longs to escape Martel’s authority and become an actress. Except that he alone is able to finance the film… The new melodrama by Pedro Almodóvar about passionate love, death, grief, jealousy, betrayal, the desire to dominate, and also remorse, smacks of "film noir” but also incorporates elements of the grotesque, humour and, above all, references to the filmmaker’s earlier cult movies. Lena is played by the enchanting Penélope Cruz, but the cast also includes some of Almodóvar’s other favourites from previous works.