September 23 2026, 18:29
Bitter Christmas
Raúl Durán is an aging writer-director trying to write a script after five years without a new film. The script he’s working on isn’t working, so he starts to pull in details from the people around him which breaks through his writer’s block. However, the people around him are also his first readers, and it doesn’t take long for them to discover what he is doing.
This is a real meta curiosity. Almodóvar has made a film about a director, Raúl, modelled on himself, writing a film script. Raúl’s film is based on the people around him, and Raúl’s main character is a failed film director, Elsa, who begins to write about the people around her. At each level, the characters being written about realise what’s happening and begin to rebel. Drawing attention to the artificiality of what you’re watching means that, as excellent as the acting is, it’s hard to care too much about the characters. They are fragments from Almodóvar’s imagination that he uses to make an artistic point.
However, there’s plenty to enjoy. The script is a little melodramatic for my taste, but the confrontations about how it feels to be used as material by a writer do hit hard, and Raúl’s insistence on prioritising his art over everyone around him is by the end pretty brutal. It’s like Almodóvar is enjoying giving himself a beating. It’s an interesting film, a bit cold, but it has enough ideas and strong performances to make it worth the time.
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