Broken Embraces Blu-ray offers solid video and great audio in this overall recommended Blu-ray release
A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car
crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he not only lost his sight, he also lost
Lena, the love of his life. This man used two names: Harry Caine, a playful pseudonym with
which he signs his literary works, stories and scripts, and Mateo Blanco, his real name, with
which he lives and signed the films he directed. After the accident, Mateo Blanco reduces
himself to his pseudonym, Harry Caine. If he can't direct films he can only survive with the
idea that Mateo Blanco died on Lanzarote with his beloved Lena. In the present day, Harry
Caine lives thanks to the scripts he writes and to the help he gets from his faithful former
production manager, Judit García, and from Diego, her son, his secretary, typist and guide.
Since he decided to live and tell stories, Harry is an active, attractive blind man who has
developed all his other senses in order to enjoy life, on a basis of irony and self-induced
amnesia. He has erased from his biography any trace of his first identity, Mateo Blanco. One
night Diego has an accident and Harry takes care of him (his mother, Judit, is out of Madrid
and they decide not to tell her anything so as not to alarm her). During the first nights of
his convalescence, Diego asks him about the time when he answered to the name of Mateo
Blanco, after a moment of astonishment Harry can't refuse and he tells Diego what
happened fourteen years before with the idea of entertaining him, just as a father tells his
little child a story so that he'll fall asleep. The story of Mateo, Lena, Judit and Ernesto
Martel is a story of amour fou, dominated by fatality, jealously, the abuse of power,
treachery and a guilt complex. A moving and terrible story, the most expressive image of
which is the photo of two lovers embracing, torn into a thousand pieces.
Films have to be finished, even if you do it blindly.
Broken Embraces (or Los Abrazos Rotos in its native Spanish tongue), the latest
picture from the team of Director Pedro Almodóvar and Actress Penélope Cruz -- who worked
together
on Live Flesh, All About My Mother, and Volver -- may be the
tandem's finest achievement to date, the picture a heartbreaking, erotic, and mysterious journey
into the lives of several players and their interactions in both 2008 and 1990s Madrid. But that's
just what's on the surface. Highly metaphoric, superficially lightly but thematically heavily
atmospheric, and told with a simplistic elegance despite a complexly-weaved plot that's rarely
achieved in cinema, Broken Embraces solidifies Almodóvar as a master visual storyteller
and manipulator of emotion, his latest film exploring a myriad of issues, not the least of which are
human perception both visual and emotional within the context of loves won and lost amidst the
world of filmic storytelling and the vast difference in perception between one take -- or one
moment -- and the next.
Unbroken embrace.
It's the year 2008, and blind filmmaker Harry Caine (Lluís Homar) is visited by a mysterious
young man named Ray X (Rubén Ochandiano) who wants Harry to pen a fictionalized version of
his life story into a shooting script. Harry refuses, but his discovery of Ray's identity leads him to
recall his younger days when he was known by his given name, Mateo Blanco, a man with sight
and a vision for a picture that would come to be called Chicas y Maletas, or Girls and
Suitcases. Magdalena Rivas (Cruz) is a secretary and part-time call girl who works for the
wealthy Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez), but she dreams of doing more with her life and lands a
part in Mateo's movie while also instantly landing in his heart. The two begin a torrid love affair
that morphs into a steady, loving relationship, much to the dismay of Ernesto, who himself loves
Magdalena and is financially backing Mateo's film. As events unfold both in Harry Caine's past and
Mateo Blanco's future, a tale of love, loss, vision, anger, and regret comes into focus as the lives
of several individuals intersect and fiddle with fate.
Broken Embraces exists not only to tell a story but to examine how it is that stories are
told both in film and in life, not only thematically and visually but on a deeper and more complex
level. The picture's primary and, indeed,
secondary "film within a film" serve dual purposes, including that of a catalyst for the player's
actions and revelations as well as, and more pertinent to theme rather than structure, a symbolic
reinforcement of Broken Embraces's ideas on visual and physical perceptions both of the
world as it is seen and as it is perceived. Indeed, Almodóvar uses filmmaking as a metaphor for
understanding life and its many complexities; it's sometimes about pointing and shooting and
capturing images in the raw and sometimes about the delicate process of getting things right
after several tries and assembling them in the correct order. In film there are many chances to
get things just right; in life there is but one. In film, a story can be manipulated to make
audiences feel anger or sadness or love or hate; in life, there's no editing, no cutting, no
rearranging. Life is what it is, fleeting as it may be, and it takes not a master editor and keen
eyesight but instead a perception of what's good and worthy and what's worthy of discard to build
a focused and complete picture with the caveat that there's but a single chance to get it right.
Almodóvar delicately builds his picture with a skill of both the physical and emotional kind;
Broken Embraces' themes on sight, perception, acting, and life are captured in a
colorfully-assembled structure that's intricate but incredibly easy to embrace, the picture a
structural work
of art but also a contextually ripe experience that lingers long after the picture's conclusion for its
wonderful realization of the inner-workings of the human condition. Almodóvar's lends to the
picture something of a throwback feel but grounds the movie in a modern look; Broken
Embraces spans
some 15 years but the back-and-forth shifting from one period to the next never interferes with
flow, look, structure, or purpose. In fact, the director's ability to layer the picture so precisely
with unraveling secrets in the building of the larger story in almost every sequence proves as
mesmerizing as the picture's thematic developments. Additionally, Almodóvar's lead actors
deliver impeccable efforts, each able to convey many of the picture's deeper dramatic elements
not always with dialogue and physical posturing but with merely a look, a credit to both the
performers'
understanding of the story and Almodóvar's ability to just-so-precisely capture the moment on
film. Penélope Cruz physically ignites the screen but also does much more than look good for the
camera, her character the film's central focus and the actress capturing the many overtones and
nuances that bring the story into harmony. Lluís Homar, however, is the picture's master
performer, playing what amounts to two different characters trapped in the same body but
through them both wielding the picture's overreaching themes of sight and purpose of vision, not
only in fiction but in life. José Luis Gómez, Tamar Novas, and Blanca Portillo also deliver strong
supporting performances.
Sony delivers Broken Embraces to Blu-ray with a competent 1080p, 2.35:1-framed
transfer.
The image often looks flat and with minimal visual pizzazz, though it does deliver fair detailing
and
strong color reproduction. One of the transfer's most notable aspects are the often soft
backgrounds with edges around the frame that sometimes appear downright blurred, though this
seems more in-line with the director's intended vision for the film rather than any misstep along
the way to the transfer to Blu-ray. Likewise, fine detail can appear slightly undefined at worst or,
as the case most often is, solid but unremarkable, save for a seaside scene featuring Magdalena
and Mateo where hats, clothing, skin, and even the surrounding sands appear intricately
detailed and textured. On the flip side, color reproduction is easily this transfer's strength. As
one might expect of a Pedro Almodóvar motion picture, Broken Embraces is awash in
bright hues, and
while most appear as naturally reproduced rather than excessively or otherwise phonily rendered,
bright red shades to, seemingly deliberately, stand out with a bit more punch and vigor than do
any other hues. Flesh tones appear spot-on, but blacks tend to waver and minute banding is
visible in select scenes. Sony's Blu-ray release of Broken Embraces is competent but not
extraordinarily film-like, but it still delivers the goods and appears to remain rather faithful to
Pedro Almodóvar's vision for the film, though the absence of a commentary track or documentary
on the disc makes it a bit harder to know for sure.
A Spanish-language DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless soundtrack accompanies the Blu-ray release of
Broken Embraces; no dubbed English language track is available, though this disc does
default to English subtitles. This track is direct and contemplative, with little in the way of powerful
beats or massive surround activity. The film's musical score is delivered smoothly and competently;
it's clean and precise with admirable clarity across the front and a subtle support structure in the
rear. Additionally, heavier beats penetrate the listening area during a few club scenes that
deliver some welcome low-end punch to the proceedings, the only real spice in an otherwise
effectively vanilla soundtrack. Background ambience is minimal but sufficiently effective; listeners
will note passing vehicles, a light din of a busy city street, or various seaside atmospherics in one
scene. A dialogue-intense picture, Broken Embraces enjoys superior clarity in that
department. Broken Embraces won't push any sound system to its limits, but Sony has
nevertheless delivered an exceptionally faithful soundtrack that's worthy of the film.
Broken Embraces arrives on Blu-ray with a small collection of bonus materials. The
Cannibalistic Councillor (480p, 7:34) is an original short film, directed by Pedro Almodóvar,
and featuring a character from Broken Embraces as the central focus. Pedro
Directs Penélope (480p, 5:52) offers a peak into the directorial process as Almodóvar works
with Cruz during the filming of a scene from Broken Embraces. Next up is On the
Red Carpet: The New York Film Festival Closing Night (1080p, 3:13), a brief glimpse into the
goings-on at the festival and intercut with several interview clips with The Film Society of Lincoln
Center's Program Director Richard Peña, Broken Embraces Director Pedro Almodóvar, and
Actress Penélope Cruz. Variety Q&A with Penelope Cruz (1080i, 6:18) features the
actress answering questions from Variety's Todd McCarthy, intercut with snippets from the film.
Also included is a collection of three Broken Embraces deleted scenes (1080p, 12:20);
the
Broken Embraces
theatrical trailer (1080p, 1:45); BD-Live functionality; and additional 1080p trailers for An Education, Coco Before Chanel,
The Imaginarium of Doctor
Parnassus, Volver, Rachel Getting
Married, Frozen
River, Adoration, The Damned
United, and "Breaking Bad"
Broken Embraces shows Pedro Almodóvar as a master cinematic craftsman of the more
deeply intricate, purposeful, and indeed even personal kind whose films might take patience and
the
audience's utmost attention both during and long after to truly appreciate, but the
rewards are many as this picture stays with the viewer long after its completion and its many
intricacies slowly build and form for each viewer a personal but no less purposeful moviegoing
experience. Much like the pictures of Atom Egoyan (Adoration, The
Sweet Hereafter), Broken Embraces challenges the mind but does so in the form of
a structurally magnificent picture that's emotion visualized and drama realized at the deepest of
levels. Even through Broken Embraces' more dramatic and purposeful themes, Director
Pedro Almodóvar has also crafted a fun and breezy throwback-type of Mystery that's as engaging
as it is entertaining, the picture a complete experience that's worthy of repeat viewings and
greater discussion as to its merits and ideas that linger well beyond the film's two-hour
runtime. Broken Embraces makes for another good Blu-ray release from Sony.
Sporting a solid technical presentation but unfortunately lacking a more purposeful and in-depth
supplemental package, the disc nevertheless earns a recommendation based on the quality of the
film.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos), the latest movie directed by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, for Blu-ray release on March 16. Broken Embraces, starring Penélope Cruz, is a complex story of amour fou, jealousy, ...
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