The arduous process of a quite particular writing, between fiction itself and reality, or how to overcome a crisis of creativity twenty years apart, brings references to one’s own career and the misadventures of the environment. Its narrative structure obeys the double process of a film script, in past and present, thanks to profiles designed or revived with the distinctive seal of the same author.
Bitter Christmas (Spain, 2026). Autofiction, personal references and resumed and unfinished experiences from someone else’s past life for a film script. “A fiction within another fiction”; that is, biographical appropriations that embrace individual boundaries between reality and imagination. Complex, its narrative writing: parallel story with stories that are written based on memory (memories), archetypes (or close models) and private experiences. Inspired, presumably, by well-known or unknown profiles – only its author knows -, thanks to the group of friends and relatives who cross paths with some family circles – this is the case of Raúl, the director’s alter ego, played on this occasion by the Argentine Leonardo Sbaraglia -.
A vignette similar to the puzzle that makes up a fictional novel is then put together – clarifying that fictionalin Latin, means to pretend (situations) or simulate (characters), which can be both real and non-existent. Two sketched times – jumps from 2004 to 2025 -, two stories – that of an advertising librettist in mourning and that of someone who tries to write or return to the cinema to overcome emotional crises -, and two existentialist states that lead us to freedom or the blockage of creation, both literary and cinematographic.
Elsa, the screenwriter of the past (Bárbara Lennie, wonderful), and Raúl – call him Pedro –, the filmmaker by trade (Leo Sbaraglia); also, Mónica, desk assistant in the current phase (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, magnificent actress). The first, in antidepressant treatment, with the background of an alleged cult debut – from a religious sect or… demonic?, asks the psychotherapist.
In the dualities typical of outlined characters and performers – à la Luigi Pirandello –, Almodóvar resorts to a dramaturgy whose plot, or intrigue, aims to be cathartic to unblock and relieve his consecutive writers – he recalls The law of desire–. Additionally, the time factor transports us to All about my mother and his direct tributes to A streetcar named desire and All about Eva. Also, two environmental spaces: the central Madrid ones and… Lanzarote – a volcanic Canary Island -, from a comfortable coastal residence with an architectural line in line with the lunatic natural landscape.
pain and glory (Spain, 2019). In fiction: a famous Valencian film director, named Salvador, endures the crisis of age 60 and, in the midst of his creative stagnation, remembers the successes of Sabor – a film made thirty years ago –, returns to his small-town childhood and has gradual reunions with events or characters that marked his existence. A hypochondriac, illnesses have accompanied him throughout his life and he suffers from nervous depression as well as headaches, muscle and spinal pain. He alternates his restlessness and kaleidoscopic gaze with… a powerful psychoactive drug (heroin), which plunges him into a psychotic state, until he confuses dreams and remembrances with permanent hallucinations.
Salvador tells how he spent his childhood years with his supposedly loving mother in a white Valencian cave transformed into the altar of his memories, when he saw clothes being washed in the river and felt shocked by the semi-naked body of a bricklayer and painter. Two old friends move from the past to the present: the fetish actor of his most praised creations and the great Argentine love who abandoned him to form a family beyond the seas.
In the last forty-five years, Almodóvar has written and directed a total of twenty-five feature films, whose chronologically disordered titles give rise to clever plays on words. Madrid between… Labyrinth of passions and bad educationafter Kika and Matador, tremulous flesh and Far Heels. between darkness –drug addict nuns–, with Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Other girls from the crowdbut… What have I done to deserve this? Tie me up! Return, The law of desire and The flower of my secretso… talk to her, Parallel mothers, pain and glory, Passenger lovers and broken hugsin The skin I live in. Juliana: Strange way of life and bitter christmas, All about my motherin The next room.
