BROKEN EMBRACES With Penelope Cruz Movie Review

Broken Embraces, the new Pedro Almodovar and starring Penelope Cruz, was just released in select theaters this Friday November 20 2009. Broken Embraces story goes as follows:
At the centre of this affecting feature sits a blind screenwriter and former director who has abandoned his real name, Mateo Blanco, for a pseudonym, Harry Caine, the first sign of the double life he leads. Harry’s current reality conceals a fascinating past, which Almodóvar spends much of his film detailing. The plot is propelled by the arrival of a brash young man, hot on the heels of news that the producer of Mateo’s film “Girls and Suitcases” has died. The film marked a defining period in Mateo’s life, as both he and his producer had fallen madly in love with a girl who was cast in the project. The simmering Lena had turned both of their worlds inside out. She became the love of Mateo’s life while simultaneously leading a double life with the film’s producer. But it is the young man on his doorstep that intrigues and troubles the now blind Harry. Who is he?. If you are planning to go see the movie, here are a few reviews from around the web to help you make up your mind.

Fanbolt.com
To compare Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” to Pedro Almodóvar’s new film, “Broken Embraces” may raise a few eyebrows. “Basterds,” one hand, is a bloody, tense, World War II revisionist phantasmagoria, and “Embraces” is a touching, satiric melodrama which jumps back and forth between the mid-1990’s and 2008. But on the other hand, both live in worlds where men and women are defined by cinema, one in which film is a living, breathing entity, and if necessary film can be used as a weapon. Read More

Huffington Post
Like a well-crafted novel, Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces” takes its time revealing its true intentions. It’s an emotional time bomb, one packed with passion, color, romance and tragedy.
Set alternately in the present and the early 1990s, “Broken Embraces” ostensibly is about a blind screenwriter named Harry Caine (Lluis Homar). First seen enjoying a sexual fling with a young woman he’s just met, Harry is obviously in demand as a writer. His agent Judit (Blanca Portillo) is pressuring him to finish an overdue script, so he can get to work on his next one. Read More

Associated Content
In the most indelible scene of “Broken Embraces” (“Los abrazos rotos”), Pedro Almodovar’s latest vivid melodrama, Penelope Cruz plays dress-up.
As an aspiring actress named Lena, she’s testing wardrobe for a film. She quickly turns to the camera in one wig after another, each time flashing the megawatt smile of a silver screen goddess. It might be Lena’s first movie, but Cruz has gotten the hang of this.
In her fourth film with Almodovar, Cruz gives her most glamorous performance yet — and a fitting one, too. “Broken Embraces” is in many ways a movie about movies. It’s full of references to other films (including Almodovar’s). Cruz is even done up like Audrey Hepburn. Read More

The Star-Ledger – NJ.com
The Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar is one of those auteurs who lost his heart to films early. His work is one long, worshipfully detailed love letter, cataloguing cinema’s colors, emotions and movements.
Almodóvar’s new film, “Broken Embraces,” is another mash note to the movies — and perhaps his most accessible film in years. Like much of his recent work (“Talk to Her,” “Bad Education”), it sets up two narratives: One follows the present-day travails of a blind, melancholy writer; the other shows the long-ago passions of a coolly successful Madrid business mogul. Before long, the stories tragically come together. Read More

Check out the trailer of Broken Embraces below.