Pain and Glory
Director: Pedro Almodovar

In a body of work noted for its dazzle and disruption, for its wild see-sawing between comedy and tragedy, Pedro Almodóvar’s latest plays in an unusually meditative key.

The director, once the transgressive imp of Spain’s post-Franco cinema, turns 70 this year, and if not quite autumnal in mood, Pain and Glory is much preoccupied with the past, with his own upbringing and the broken embraces of old lovers and estranged colleagues. It is a kind of reckoning, shot through with mischief and yet extraordinarily tender in its retrospective glow.