Pain and Glory: An aging director recalls his first crush and his first boyfriend, with nostalgia and nudity

For forty years, Pedro Almodóvar has been giving us raucous, irreverent, sometimes funny glimpses into the sexual and social freedom of post-Franco Spain: Bad Education; Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!; A Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; What Have I Done to Deserve This? He's not exactly a proponent of essentialist gay identity: his gay men are usually there to have affairs with the female focus character, when she's not busy seducing her stepson.  Or maybe she'll seduce her stepson and his boyfriend, or join her sister in having the affair with the gay man.  There will be male nudity, urination, pop culture references, and kitsch. And these aren't comedies. 

Pedro went through similar machinations in his private life, being closeted, then stating that he was bisexual, and finally coming out as gay.  He's been with his partner, Fernando Iglesias, since 2002.

Dolor y gloria, Pain and Glory, is the 74-year old director's swan song, a summary and perhaps a justification of his work, touching on all of his major themes:  "sentimientos, costumbrismo, reencuentros, homosexualidad, sensibilidad, pasión, familia, drogas… "

Almodóvar stand-in Salvador, played by regular star Antonio Banderas, is an aging director, in physical and mental decline.  His chronic pain has kept him from new projects for several years.

Left: A misty memory of Banderas, fully nude in his first film appearance in 1982.

Asked to speak at the restoration of one of his old films, Flavor, he decides to look up the star, Alberto (Asier Etxeandia, left), whom he hasn't seen since the filming.  They had a falling out over Alberto's use of heroin on the set.

While reconciling, and trying heroin himself to ease his chronic pain, he tells the story of his first boyfriend.  

His First Boyfriend:  Director Salvador was in a relationship with Federico, played by Leonardo Sbaraglia, in the 1980s, but ended it due to his heroin use.  

Federico turned out to be one of Almodovar's temporary gay men: he left the "lifestyle" behind, moved to Argentina, married a woman, and had children.

Flavor star Alberto turns this story into a play that draws the attention of the real life Federico.  He returns to Madrid and wants to start the relationship again, but Director Salvador wants to keep the past in the past. 

More after the break

Teaching the Boy to Read:  When he was a little boy, Director Salvador got a job teaching the painter Eduardo, Cesar Vicente, to read and write.  One day he stumbled upon Eduardo naked and fainted.  Eduardo and his mother attributed this to heat exhaustion, but actually he was overcome by homoerotic desire, recognizing for the first time that he was gay. 

His mother pushed him into the seminary, although he didn't want to become a priest, and he never saw Eduardo again.

There's also a lot of stuff about his dying mother in the story.

When Director Salvador tells the story to his assistant, Mercedes, she takes him to an art gallery, where he recognizes a painting that Eduardo started that day many years ago.  His mother kept it a secret until her death.

On the back of the painting, there's a note from Eduardo, thanking Director Salvador for his help and giving his contact information, in case he wants to get together.  But Director Salvador wants the past to stay in the past.

He does get help for his pain and other ailments, and starts writing again.

Maybe it's Strange Way of Life, which is about letting the past stay in the past.

See also: Alberto Ferreira: Not the gay guy in The Other Side or Bad Education, but he has a big dick

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