Sorrow and Glory

The great filmmaker Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) once enjoyed great success. But a life of excess has left its mark. Marked by pain and loss, the director looks back on his life, his special relationship with his mother (Penélope Cruz), his first great unrequited love and his meeting with Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), which will change his life from the ground up. Facing all these memories is painful and Salvador threatens to break completely. But he also knows that he must face his past in order to start a new life.

Suffering and Glory is arguably the most personal film from director Pedro Almodóvar, who repeatedly mixes autobiographical truth with fiction in it. He tells in the drama of three formative eras from the dazzling life of his quasi-alter ego Salvador Mallo. The whole is carried by an excellent performance of Antonio Banderas, who delivers especially as a man marked by suffering and drugs great. The more you learn about the filmmaker's past, the more you can understand what causes this sadness, which is especially evident in his gaze.

The episodic glimpses into Salvador Mallo's life are at times moving, passionate, a little dark, but also joyful and amusing. Almodovar does a great job of showing how multi-faceted a life can be and how formative some of the events and people we encounter along life's journey are. I have to admit that I was a bit on the fence at the end of the film. Yes, I liked the movie. In some moments even very well. But I also have to admit that I was a bit unsure what I was supposed to be told here. Some scenes seemed a bit irrelevant, too ponderously staged to be really significant for the story.

But in the end I decided for myself not to pick the film apart dramaturgically. Sure, in doing so, some new insights would be guaranteed to present themselves. But first and foremost, what mattered to me was whether the film moved me emotionally and whether I was well entertained. And both questions I can answer with a clear conscience with yes - despite some lengths. Suffering and Glory has its weaknesses, but overall it is a simply beautiful and well acted drama. For this, there is then also quite clearly a: Absolutely worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp