Pedro Almodóvar's PAIN AND GLORY is, yes, painful and glorious (and funny and moving, and subtle and smart)

Anyone who has followed the more-than-40-year career of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar can hardly help but have noticed the tonal change in his films from the crazy, highly sexual and often darkly comedic to the more serious -- if still sometimes dark and sexual -- explorations into family and Freud (granted, his very own version of the good doctor).

Almodóvar's later films may have been successful to varying degrees, just as were his earlier movies -- though to listen to some critics/fans, those early comedies were all fabulous and wonderful; instead, they too were a mixed bag -- yet one of the distinct pleasures of contemplating this man's fecund career (he is shown at right) comes in seeing, little by little, the enormous depth and growth involved.

TrustMovies is certainly not alone in finding his latest film, PAIN AND GLORY, the pinnacle and culmina-tion (but not the finale, I hope) of his career.

In it, Antonio Banderas (above and below) -- who has appeared in numerous Almodóvar films over the years and whose career took off via this filmmaker -- plays an aging filmmaker very much like Almodóvar, whose life story we see unfurl here via flashback and present-day excursions into his current life of enormous physical pain (everything from excruciating back pain to migraines),

drug addiction, the rekindling of both a friendship and a hugely important love relationship, and a possible career rehabilitation via the rediscovery of one of his successful older films.

If this sounds like a lot to cover in a mere two hours, let it be known that the filmmaker does it all with breathtaking skill, surprising subtlety and intelligence, the expected (but still gorgeous) visuals exquisitely combining composition and color, and drawing spot-on performances from a well-chosen cast that includes Penélope Cruz (above, playing his mother in her younger days) and Julieta Serrano (below, right, as older mom).

The two performance highlights, however, come from that fine Argentine actor Leonardo Sbaraglia (below, right), playing the ex-lover with such passion, wit and alertness that this pretty much constitutes a career-best role -- in a career that already has some really spectacular ones (Wild Horses, Intacto, Contestant and King of the Mountain),

and from Asier Etxeandia (below), as the ex-friend and actor who starred in the filmmaker's most famous work, now estranged but gleefully ready to reconnect via drugs and maybe a new acting role. Etxeandia is exciting to watch in action, and his role is one of the film's best written and realized, as well as its most complicated creation.

Almodóvar does not attempt to make his "hero'" all that heroic. He's a user -- not just of drugs but of people. Watch sadly at how he treats his devoted personal secretary (Nora Navas, below, right). But, oh, god, he is so human. And his creativity, from what we can gather, is worth saving and encouraging.

As the filmmaker's delightfully intelligent younger self, Asier Flores (shown at bottom) proves a real find. This youngster gets one of the film's perfect scenes, in which incipient sexuality overtakes our hero in one marvelous, sudden rush. No explanation necessary, and Almodóvar doesn't belabor the point. (Shown below is the amazingly sensuous César Vicente, who plays the key element in that pivotal scene.)

Another bit of perfection occurs at film's end, when the writer/director simply moves his camera just a tad, in the process quietly letting us know that, "Hey, it's only a movie, right?" Sure. But what a movie!

From Sony Pictures Classics (and I would guess a front-runner for Best Foreign Language Film nomination), in Spanish with English subtitles, and lasting 113 minutes, Pain and Glory, after opening in key cities, hits South Florida this Friday, October 18, all over the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach areas. To find the theater(s) nearest you, simply click here, then click on GET TICKETS, scroll down to the October 18 dates and find your local theater(s). Or just fill in your zip code in the blank space and make things even easier.

Miguel Gomes' stodgy, homage-y TABU opens at Film Forum: Of croc and schlock

I am guessing that the work of Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (previous output: four shorts, the widely heralded Our Beloved Month of August and his earlier The Face You Deserve) is an acquired taste. On the basis of his latest film, TABU, TrustMovies feels that he has not quite yet made that acquisition. Evidently a kind of homage to the work of early movie-maker F. W. Murnau -- even the poster images (the current film's is shown above, the older one's below) have a certain similarity -- Gomes' newest creation provides a not uninteresting combination of colonial critique (Portugal in Africa), forbidden love, the past and the present, and both old-fashioned and somewhat newfangled black-and-white cinematography.

But it all seems finally rather precious and not, I am afraid, that entertaining. At just under two hours, the film does go on. And as it does, the little life, mostly derived from the first half, set in modern day, drains out. The second half tells what ought to be a more interesting story of the love affair between the younger versions of the old woman and man we meet in part one.

But the filmmaker, shown at right, loves to dawdle and diddle, and so getting there, as they say, takes some time. Along the way, we're given story upon story that connect via countries and landscape (the jungle, the African plains and especially crocodiles, see below) that figure into just about every-thing concerning the past and in the dreams our char-acters have in the present.

We also get an early rock band from the period and some accompanying songs that are fun to hear again. While there is a certain "beauty" in much of the goings-on and in the often lovely black-and-white cinematography, the connections that would make for drama are so tenuous that little feeling for anyone or anything is generated. Some critics have called this "brilliantly nuanced," "mind-bending and utterly mysterious," but for me the result produced more than a whiff of... call it kitsch, schlock or camp, that made it impossible to take anything here all that seriously.

I wasn't bored by Tabu (I nodded off for a few seconds only once!) and I found myself taken with some of the characters: the cranky old woman (Laura Soveral, in photo at bottom) whom we see as a younger semi-femme fatale in Part Two; her kindly, ineffective neighbor Pilar (Teresa Madruga), shown below, at the cinema on a semi-date with a fellow who looks a bit like a sleeping Sondheim. If you were so inclined, you could call this one a semi-movie.

Also worth a look is the male lead in Part Two, Carloto Cotta (shown below and on poster, top, with Ana Moreira), as the youn-ger version of the old man we meet at the end of Part One. He is a stunner whose great beauty of face, body and hands ensures that the second section moves, if not quickly, more enjoyably.

So, yes, there are a number of things that make Tabu a forbidden pleasure. If only Mr. Gomes had been able to see that they coalesce more effectively. To my great surprise, the film has popped up on a 10-best list or two, which should at least ensure some kind of audience here in New York City.

To that end, the movie, an Adopt Films release, opens tomorrow, Wednesday, December 26, at New York's Film Forum for a two-week run. So see what you think, New Yorkers. To view all upcoming playdates around the country, click Adopt's web site here, then click on FILMS and then on TABU.

A small movie miracle opens: Ari Taub's LAST LETTERS FROM MONTE ROSA -- plus a short Q&A with the filmmaker

Could there be, at this late date, anything left to say about World War II, specifically about the Germans, Italians and Americans who fought in the mountains of northern Italy as the war came to a close? On the basis of two new films -- The Man Who Will Come, which recently won Italy's Best Picture award and premiered during the recent FSLC's Open Roads, and now a small, independent American movie, LAST LETTERS FROM MONTE ROSA directed by Ari Taub (shown just below) and co-written by Nick Day and Caio Ribeiro (who doubled as cinematographer) -- there's plenty left to say.  And, boy, it this worth hearing (and seeing). Regarding Mr. Taub's new film, I believe that Sam Fuller would approve mightily.

Last Letters from Monte Rosa begins with the explanation that a long-buried mailbag of letters written by Italians and Germans toward the end of WWII was discovered.  (More about this satchel in the Q&A that follows.) Instead of the documentary we might expect from this beginning, we're thrust into narrative mode, in the north of Italy, jostling amongst a German platoon of soldiers that awaits the arrival of its Italian counterpart. In the surrounding forest are the Italian partisans, as well as a few Americans, one of whom visits a heavy-set Italian sleazebag who appears to be a some sort of crime boss, complete with his own set of goons, to finalize the sale of some cases of expensive black-market French wine.

It's an incendiary situation, what with the American military further encroaching on Italian turf, and the German and Italian soldiers at each other's throats.  Their respective commanders fare a bit better, however. Class will out, I guess.  The first thing you may notice is the terrifically real "look" of the film: From the costumes to the various equipment that the soldiers must use, from the men's faces to their anything-but-buff bodies, everything seems remarkably "as it was."  

The stories that Taub and his writer show us are small but telling, with moment after moment written and acted with quiet beauty and strength.  Best of all, I think, is that, by the end of this film, you'll have trouble finding any villains. Collectively, of course, you can pin the tail on the German donkey, or on the Il Duce's military.  But individually, even with plenty of bad behavior across the boards, the humanity of each of these men shines through -- and in no sappy manner. Taub, his writers and his actors, make you mourn the death of the individual Germans, even as you detest their cause.  As for the Italians, the difference between the partisans and those who "fought for their country" has seldom seemed less important, even as you know that it was, of course, all-important.

Last Letters is full of wonderful incident: that black-market wine deal (shown below); a conversation (above) between the Italian commander and his right-hand man in which the former wonders if Hitler is right: Are the Germans a superior people?   Then there's a deer that manages to first divide the soldiers -- German from Italian -- before bringing them together, and another scene of a German instructing the Italians on how to plant a land mine.  Best of all, perhaps, is an extremely suspenseful few moments between the Italian partisans and the Italian military.

Taub, who has built his way up to this film via earlier ones -- shorts and full-length -- shows surprising skill as a moviemaker.  He draws excellent performances from his cast members, recruited from Ger-
many & Italy who came to America to film (upstate New York, Mas-
sachusetts and Pennsylvania all stand in for Northern Italy).  Even the director's use of slow-motion is judicious; he manages to make that old cliché death seem somehow new -- and horribly unfair.

Taub's work is such a small movie, but it's one that deserves some real acclaim.  The director never bites off more than he can chew, yet he challenges us just the same.  Last Letters from Monte Rosa opens this Friday for a week's run at New York's newest home for independent cinema in Brooklyn: IndieScreen. You can find dates and screening time here.

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Once TrustMovies had seen the film, he turned to the press kit for further information. What a gold mine it proved, making him even more impressed with Mr. Taub, his writers and his cast of wonderful actors, who have given up so much to be able to make this fine film.

First of all, the movie was shot almost entirely here in the U.S., with the actors imported from Europe.  The verisimilitude is certainly achieved.  Performances are terrific, right down the line.  Indoor photography was shot on sets created in studios in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, hence the entirely appropriate venue in which the film is opening.  Most bizarre, I guess, is the fact that here is a piece of American independent cinema that is actually a low-budget WWII combat drama.

We catch director Ari Taub for a 30-minute phone call during which he fills us in with answers to a few on extra questions that the press kit did not address. In the following TrustMovies' question are in boldface, white Taub's answers are in standard type.

Were there actually that batch of letters mentioned at the beginning of the film? Can you give us some background on that?

Yes. everybody always wants to know about those letters! The satchel of letters does exist. Letters were recovered in Northern Italy maybe 10-14 years ago. A lot of them were rotted and only bits and pieces could be read. We only read a fragment from one letter --

Was that the letter from the German commander to his wife that we hear at the end?

Yes: the one that was read at the end. To prepare for this film, we read that fragment and also Last Letters from Stalingrad, a wonderful book written by soldiers who perished during the Battle of Stalingrad in Russia.  And so, from a single fragment, rather like one bone from a dinosaur, we created the whole piece.

According to the IMDB, you've made other films: shorts and full-length, and a number of these were war films.

Yes, I have made a number war films. Some of my war films, in fact, are earlier versions of this movie. The Fallen tells the story from the American viewpoint. This one is my favorite, though, because it seems unique. I really worked hard to get inside the hearts and minds of how men would act during this time.

After this initial week's run at IndieScreen, where might your film go?

We hope elsewhere around the country, of course, but we don’t have a big war chest for getting the movie out there.

What was the total cost of making  this film, start to finish?

The cost all told was $350,000, includsive of everything.  Our production budget was $210,000 and then of course there was post production.

And how long, total, did it take to film?

It took seven years to complete this movies.

Wow.

It's unbelievable, the amount of time and life that went into this work. Mostly because we did not have the money. There was a time that we couldn't even continue shooting for two years because we had no money.

Your cast really is wonderful.  So real.  Did they all come from abroad?

No: the guy who played the local gangster (Rossini, shown below), sort of the small town bully, he is a friend of mine (Carmine Raspaolo) who lives right here in Brooklyn. He had wanted to play one of the soldiers, but I had to tell him he just weighed too much. But we could -- and did -- cast him as that gangster.

How old are you now, Ari?

I’m 44 years old.

Is there anything else you'd like to say, since I have you for this quick interview?

Maybe I should say why I originally wanted to even make this movie.

Yes, good idea.

I wanted to tell a story that involved the cooperation between German and Italian men during WWII because I found these people to be so different from each other. I could not imagine how they could get along. And when I researched, I found copious amounts of material that corroborated the fact that they did not get along.

And yet, you make it so they do try to get along.

Yes. Some of my best friends are both German and Italian. So I don’t want people to think that I don't like either group!

Nobody's gonna think that.  Your movie is too full of understanding and appreciation for humanity -- of whatever country or group.