Reminded me of a Spanish version of Fellini’s “8 1/2”, and just as brilliant. Banderas gives one of his best performances in the lead role of a director at a personal and creative cross roads in his life and Penelope Cruz is wonderful as his mother. The last ten minutes of the film are the most erotic and heartbreaking I’ve ever seen put on screen. Incredible film!

A film about memory, loss, unfulfilled desire and creating fiction out of fact. Nicely done.

Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) is suffering. He suffers from mental and physical deterioration, the pain of which causes him to seek out heroin as an analgesic. Pedro Almodóvar, known for his kitschy color palates and melodramatic stories, turns the camera inward, as Salvador acts as a stand-in for himself. The story intermingles flashbacks of youth — featuring the Almodóvar-omnipresent, Penelope Cruz as Salvador’s mother, Jacinta — and the twilight years of his artistic success, wherein Salvador seeks inspiration as he battles multiple demons. The plot accelerates while tenderizing when Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia) joins the story. The meta (within meta?) ending may have been a bit much and I wonder if the movie would’ve been better served with Salvador merely revealing he has started writing again. While lacking the gestalt that has become so familiar with the madrileño, Pain and Glory is a more serious undertaking and welcome reflection from the director and his decades of success.

A great movie with a lack lister ending.

Sentimental and nostalgic. Performances are fantastic. Movie touches your heart.

I know next to nothing about Director, Almodovar‘s life but there are apparently autobiographical elements present in this satisfying & understated film somewhat built along less flamboyant lines similar somewhat with Fellini‘s own depiction of a filmmaker coming to terms with his past & those he interacted with, not always in a considerate manner. Banderas’rich characterization adds much to the atmosphere & he & Penelope Cruz, both of whom have done notable work in several of Almodovar‘s previous films, understand & respond well to the Director‘s vision which adds to the viewer’s interest in their characters. All the performances of others in the cast are effective as well. The movie‘s pace may be too slow for some & the film is intentionally, I believe, devoid of large scale overpowering emotional moments, however, this consistency & honesty of approach has its own rewards & I found it a rewarding examination of the lead character‘s ruminations & attempts to come to terms with his personal & creative background. Reviewed by Peter Graham

More subdued than what you generally get from Almodóvar. I like the way the narrative is framed around not just the importance of art but the power of creating it.

Sorry, but this one was mind-numbingly boring.

One of Pedro Almodovar's best movies and most certainly his most personal, Pain and Glory tells the story of Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), a Spanish film director coming to a crossroads in both his life and his career, who begins using heroin to dull his considerable emotional and physical pain. Despite the typically bright colors Almodovar employs throughout the movie, it is a somber film about redemption, forgiveness and regret as the struggling artist looks back on his life. Banderas gives what is probably the best performance of his career as the vulnerable protagonist. As agonizing as Pain and Glory can be at times, it never fails to be entertaining and insightful.

This is very much a philosophical sort of a film, in that it features various older characters (not elderly but, lets say middle aged people) who have lived and regretted things, enjoyed things, have a lot to think about and look back on. As is typical of Almodovar's films (the director Pedro Almodovar), this film features numerous vibrant colours in the background of numerous scenes, whether they be within the houses of said characters, or in venues where films/film reels are shown and so on. This is a film that is definitely worth seeing specifically in high definition, preferably on a Blu-Ray disk, I'd say. I also liked the use of light in some scenes, giving an almost sort of faded spotlight sense visually. I felt the cast did well in showing their emotional vulnerabilities on screen - it felt a very real, perhaps even somewhat raw in terms of the humanity aspect of it, watch, although I can understand why some people may argue that reasonably well off people who have had some success and find themselves somewhat washed up in later life, perhaps don't make the most obvious people to entirely feel sorry for. Still, I did feel quite engrossed in the film and while I wouldn't actively encourage the slightly destructive things the characters do, in response to their sense of loss of identity or despair, I feel I can perhaps understand why they do what they do, to an extent. I also liked that it shows male companionship and how it can make a difference to people going through the situation depicted, as well as how the main characters mother helped him see things too. Its somewhat sombre and emotionally raw in a way, in tone at times. If your a fan of Almodovar's previous work, or Banderas work (although this is very much a slow drama film. rather than an action film) then I'd definitely recommend this. Otherwise, this is definitely worth a watch.

I finished watching it because I had invested my time. The movie was a drag. Focuses on one hedonistic, narcissistic movie writer/director. Not much fun.

I was glued to the screen and couldn't look away from this film by Pedro Almodóvar.

A beautiful and haunting movie with deep meanings.

8 1/2 is the film about filmmaking, or more accurately, the dream of filmmaking. It is a circus overflowing with life, beautiful people in beautiful costumes, and a buoyant score, where disaster means nothing when shot in luscious monochrome. A poster of Fellini's masterwork hangs in the background of Pain and Glory (2019), a quietly reflective film about a filmmaker in which life is overwhelming, once beautiful people disguise their aches and pains, and music conjures memories too painful to endure. Art and the artistic process can be so often fetishised. Artists suffering under the weight of physical and mental pain channel their burden by creating art to lighten the sprits of others. For some, like Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) a successful filmmaker in his later year, this pain is incapacitating. His time is spent doing very little except swimming, going to hospital appointments, and avoiding fans reaching out to him. Inevitably, this artistic vacuum becomes a space for reflection of all those that guided his life - his mother, a former lover, and an artistic partner. The memories writer / director Pedro Almodóvar chooses are seemingly innocuous like young Salvador excelling in his school choir or the consternation of his mother Jacinta (Penelope Cruz) as they move into a cave-like home. Conspicuously absent from this filmmaker's reflections are memories of filmmaking. There are no flashbacks to Salvador's first day on set, his first premier or receiving a prestigious award. The exorcising of movie memories enables Pain and Glory to remove the fetishising romance of filmmaking, while illuminating the necessity art plays in life. Almodóvar does this by making his men addicts to heroin, either past abusers of the substance like Salvador's former lover Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), present users like Salvador's former artistic partner actor Alberto (Asier Etxeandia), or new users like Salvador who takes up the drug to numb his empty days. We are all addicts, according to Almodóvar, but it is about choosing your addiction. Federico leaves behind heroin when family fulfils his life, Alberto's return to the stage becomes his high, and Salvador's writing fills the lacuna in his life. The numbing oblivion of drug taking is the very opposite of productive art making. The drug leaves nothing but only takes, and does nothing but disconnects us from yesterday, today and tomorrow. Art is an energising source that allows us to look and move forward, but also a connective substance to our former loves, departed family, and our childhood self. And while this can be painful to re-experience, it is therapeutic and redemptive, able to show someone, like Federico the impact he made on a former lover, or give Alberto a new and constructive purpose. Almodóvar shows this beautifully in one moment when Salvador sits in a hospital waiting room, he looks up to see a ceiling picture of a blue sky with tree branches cut up into equal grids. The image is reminiscent of a storyboard, many individual images (and memories) that make up a whole. At the same time, it is the view Salvador would have had from his childhood cave home, looking at the sky through a grated ceiling. Pedro Almodóvar could have cut to a scene explicitly showing this moment stirred up in Salvador's head, instead we see him smile privately to himself. It is enough to see the pain and glory of remembering.

well worth watching, excellent

I loved Pain & Glory. Pedro Almadovar mixes autobiographical memoires with fiction, focusing on a struggling director (a magnificent Antonio Banderas) with various health issues, including back trouble, and a recent foray into smoking heroin. This comes about after a meeting with an actor, Alberto, with whom he's been estranged from for over three decades. They worked on a film together thirty years ago, and a film festival wants to reunite them to present a restored version of the film. The film takes this issue, and very thinly makes it the spine of the film, around which we see flashbacks to Salvador's (Banderas) childhood, mainly compromising of scenes with his mother, a superb Penelope Cruz. The film blends reality and fantasy to both heartbreaking and hilarious effect, and Almadovar makes it clear that the colour palate is just as important to the film as the characters themselves. Pain & Glory is, in a way, a celebration of cinema, and this is cinema at its absolute finest, putting it on a par with The Skin I Live In (2011) as my favourite Almadovar film.

Buen final. Te deja reflexionando de las vicisitudes de la vida, los momentos trascendentales, el sufrir y sanar, el buscar inspiracion (vistas 1)

Deep and sincere, i loved it.

23.06.2021 ---------

Blatantly semi-autobiographical in nature, ‘Pain & Glory' is classic Almodóvar when it comes to the visual style full of colourful and beautiful shots, but as for the story, the pacing and even the camera-work, it's clear that this is the most stripped-back, personal and up-close we've ever seen the director. And, of course, it should be considering that the main character – played wonderfully by Antonio Banderas who gives a performance like you haven't seen him give before -- and everything he does is heavily based on Almodóvar himself. Essentially, it's a film about ageing and everything that comes with it; it's a film about feeling like you've lost your way and like you're in the dark and ready to give up which, naturally, leads you to reflect on your past and better times, and to perhaps to wonder what went wrong and where. It sounds somewhat depressing and there is an element of that to it, but Almodóvar manages the tone superbly and by the end of the film (and a delightful end it is) you're not left with that feeling at all; quite the opposite, in fact.