It’s unlikely to be remembered with any great fondness by all but Almodovar diehards, its self-regarding inwardness suggesting that he’s struggling, as his hero is here, to find something new to say.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Playlist by Bradley Warren
A beautiful, full-hearted celebration of the craft of filmmaking.
This is an especially personal work, anchored by the director’s on-off muse Antonio Banderas in perhaps his greatest performance and sweeps through the Spanish maestro’s recurrent themes: high melodrama and kitsch comedy, piety and carnal lust, sex and death, human pain and transcendent glory.
The filmmaker’s best and most personal movie in years.
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang
But if the tone is more restrained, more elegiac, and lacking that signature Almodóvar outrageousness, the emotional force still knocks you sideways.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
As ever, Almodóvar has made a film about pleasure, which is itself a pleasure: witty, intelligent and sensuous.
A mature work of meticulously tuned meta-fiction.
Pedro Almodóvar’s latest only occasionally captures the spry, comedic rhythms and impassioned intensity of his finest work.
The film often rings hollow.
The effect is a patchwork rather than an interwoven whole; the wistfully self-reflexive tone will appeal to fans of the less emphatic, more meditative end of the Almodovar spectrum.
Antonio Banderas is truly amazing in this film! Another beautiful film about memory, family, and creativity from Almodóvar.
This is an incredibly beautiful movie visually, with wonderful colors in every scene. It's also a very moving and insightful movie. It's autobiographical, but it's never self-indulgent. It brings you into the world of its main character and takes you on his consistently interesting internal journey.
Pedro Almodóvar's own private 8½. The present blends seamlessly into the past with heartbreaking moments and lingering kisses - until fiction parallels with reality in one of the most magical endings that you will ever witness on screen.