"Pain and Glory" will be too episodic for some. It has a surprising structure in the way it moves through encounters in Mallo's life and his past, not always connecting the dots. But it also has cumulative power.
These teasing biographical gestures blur the line between reality and representation, but to see this movie as confessional would miss the point. The protagonist of "Pain and Glory" was at the decline of his career. The man involuntarily looks back into the past, and a stream of vivid memories falls upon him.
He recalls such moments from his youth as tender feelings for his mother, love and separation, the search for happiness and success. Pain and Glory is an autumnal film in a ruminative minor key, with more pain than glory - although glory does make a late resurgence. He is Salvador Mallo, a movie director who has not made anything for years but who has accumulated enough money to live in comfort among expensive. Pain and Glory is a potent film about memory and middle age, or not so much, depending on who you ask. Pain and Glory is at once the gentlest and most emotionally naked movie Pedro Almodóvar has ever made. It's being billed as an autobiographical work, though that's more a matter of approach than of actual content.
Trailer Pain and Glory
Read Common Sense Media's Pain and Glory review, age rating, and parents guide. Parents need to know that Pain and Glory is a drama from popular Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. The film addresses mature topics like aging and death, drug addiction, and desire.
Pain & Glory beautifully negotiates the past and present to land in a personal place the filmmaker has never been before. Pain & Glory might see Almodóvar working in a minor key but it is a major work, graced with career-best work from Antonio Banderas. 'Pain and Glory' ('Dolor y Gloria'): Film Review. A grounded melancholic rumination on aging and artistic intent steeped in the aging director's own experiences, it may be the closest Almodóvar comes to crafting a memoir in the medium he. Mallo keeps looking back, comparing fond Pedro Almodóvar has mellowed into wisdom.