MOVIE · 2019

Pain and Glory

Drama114 min

Antonio Banderas is Salvador Mallo, a Spanish film director in physical decline, unable to make films and pulled back through memories of the life behind his work. In the present, and in recollections of 1960s Valencia and 1980s Madrid, Salvador revisits his mother, first desire, former lovers, and the actors tied to his career. Pedro Almodóvar threads those re-encounters through chronic pain, creative paralysis, and the uneasy overlap between filmmaking and autobiography, with Asier Etxeandia and Leonardo Sbaraglia among the figures who return to Salvador’s world.