Pedro Almodóvar’s Goes On A Personal Journey In PAIN AND GLORY Trailer Starring Antonio Banderas

Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar goes on a personal journey in this first trailer for Sony Classics PAIN AND GLORY, starring Antonio Banderas.

Salvador Mallo is a veteran film director, afflicted by multiple ailments, the worst of which is his inability to continue filming. His physical condition doesn’t allow it and, if he can’t film again, his life has no meaning. The mixture of medications, along with an occasional flirtation with heroin, means that Salvador spends most of his day prostrate. This drowsy state transports him to a time in his life that he never visited as a narrator. His childhood in the 60s, when he emigrated with his parents to Paterna, a village in Valencia, in search of prosperity. His mother is the beacon of that era, struggling and improvising so that the family can survive.

Also, the first desire appears. His first adult love in the Madrid of the 80s. The pain of the breakup of that love while it was still alive and intense. Writing as the only therapy to forget the unforgettable, the early discovery of cinema when films were projected on a whitewashed wall, in the open air. The cinema of his childhood smells of piss (the children urinated behind that wall), of jasmine and of the summer breeze. And also cinema as the only salvation in the face of pain, absence and emptiness. In recovering his past, Salvador finds the urgent need to recount it, and in that need he also finds his salvation.

Almodóvar says:

Quite unintentionally, Pain and Glory is the third part of a spontaneously created trilogy that has taken thirty two years to complete. The first two parts are Law of Desire and Bad Education. In the three films, the protagonists are male characters who are film directors, and desire and cinematic fiction are the pillars of the story, but the way in which fiction is glimpsed alongside reality differs in each one of them. Fiction and life are two sides of the same coin, and life always includes pain and desire. Pain and Glory reveals, among other themes, two love stories that have left their mark on the protagonist, two stories determined by time and fate and which are resolved in the fiction. When the first story happens, the protagonist is unaware of living it. He only remembers it fifty years later. It’s the story of the first time he felt the impulse of desire. Salvador was nine years old and the impression was so intense that he fell to the floor in a faint, as if struck by lightning. The second is a story that takes place at the height of the 80s, when the country was celebrating the explosion of freedom that came with democracy. This love story which Salvador writes so as to forget about it ends up transformed into a monologue, performed by Alberto Crespo and also credited to him because Salvador doesn’t want anyone to recognize him. He cedes his authorship to the actor, giving in to his insistent demand.

If you write about a director (and your work consists of directing films), it’s impossible not to think of yourself and not take your experiences as a reference. It was the most practical. My house is the house where Antonio Banderas’ character lives, the furniture in the kitchen — and the rest of the furnishings — are mine or have been reproduced for the occasion and the paintings that hang on its walls. We tried to make Antonio’s image, especially his hair, look like mine. The shoes and many of the clothes also belong to me, and the colors of his clothing. When there was some corner to fill on the set, the art director sent his assistant to my house to get some of the many objects with which I live. This is the most autobiographical aspect of the film and it turned out to be very comfortable for the crew. As a matter of fact, José Luis Alcaine came to the house several times to see the light at different hours of the day, so as to reproduce it later in the studio. I remember that during rehearsals I said to Antonio: If you think that in any sequence it’ll help if you imitate me, you can do it. Antonio said no, that it wasn’t necessary. And he was right, his character wasn’t me, but it was inside me.

Opens October 4 in New York and Los Angeles.