Broken Embraces

A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he didn’t lose only his sight, he also lost Lena, the love of his life. This man uses two names: Harry Caine, a playful pseudonym with which he signs his literary works, stories and scripts, and Mateo Blanco, his real name, with which he lives and signs the film he directs. After the accident, Mateo Blanco reduces himself to his pseudonym, Harry Caine. If he can’t direct films he can only survive with the idea that Mateo Blanco died on Lanzarote with his beloved Lena. Production Notes These dual movies - the on-set comedy and the off-set melodrama - allow the prolific and always engaging writer-director Pedro Almodóvar to speculate on cinema itself, on its imagery, iconic touchstones and capacity for clandestine observation. Kirk Honeycutt, THReviews, May 2009