Almodóvar, as is his wont, gives you splatters and splashes, swatches and swaths, of vibrant color, and he gives you the occasional rock-you-on-your-heels image (a teardrop on a ripe tomato, lovers writhing within a white-sheet cocoon), and he gives you deliberately over-the-top domestic melodrama played steadfastly straight: a blind filmmaker (shades of Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending, albeit darker shades), a kept woman turned movie starlet, a manipulative millionaire, his conniving gay son, etc. He doesn’t, however, give you much to believe in, except in this instance the undoubted radiance of Penelope Cruz, who in her mid-thirties would appear to have yet done nothing surgically to disfigure herself. It’s a sad comment on our times that that’s worthy of comment about an actress of her age. With Lluis Homar, José Luis Góez, Blanca Portillo. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
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