(Los abrazos rotos) Built upon an even more story-within-story structure than most later Almodóvar movies, “Broken Embraces” seems to reflect personal issues about art and mortality in pessimistic fashion, yet the brio of the filmmaking is undiminished. Almodóvar creates a film with a writer and director who’s blind, who mourns the loss of his great love in the same accident that took his sight. The giddy gamesplaying—elegantly demonstrating bad filmmaking—is enlivened by Penélope Cruz, more at home than in other films she’s in this year, her vivid, squishy features and darkly liquid eyes are mischief itself even when she strives to capture the essence of bad acting. She’s tiny and regal and vivacious. As for Almodóvar:Love, loss, cinema: the customary dazzle. With Blanca Portillo, Lluís Homar. 109m. (Ray Pride)
“Broken Embraces” opens Friday at Landmark Century.
Film festivals are retrenching around the world as economies contract and sponsorships dwindle. The Chicago Underground Film Festival’s 2008 edition ran in late October, just as the financial crisis began, at a venue that was difficult to get to by public transportation, during an Indian summer heat wave, opening on the closing night of Chicago International, which also was the night of Barack Obama’s primetime infomercial, just a week before the election. The results were disappointing. But a move to September this year, at the Loop-located Siskel Film Center promises better things. Festival director Bryan Wendorf is optimistic. “The economy didn’t really impact the number of films submitted. The quality, as always, ran the gamut from awful to brilliant but there was plenty to look at and choose from.”