Bitter Holidays

Pedro Almodóvar returns in peak form with one of his most personal films. In "Bitter Holidays" - his first Spanish-language production in 5 years - there is everything audiences love about his cinema: passion, intense colors, subversive humor and fully-realized characters that defy simple categorization. The screen features actors known from the director's earlier films: Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Victoria Luengo, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Milena Smit and one of Almodóvar's most important muses – Rossy de Palma. The film's protagonist is forty-year-old Elza (Bárbara Lennie), who after her mother's death throws herself into work, refusing to allow herself to grieve. Only a panic attack forces her to stop and embark on a journey that becomes a confrontation with the past, lost relationships and unfulfilled desires. From chance encounters, emotional turns and intertwining life stories, Almodóvar weaves a narrative about how memory, fiction and desire constantly rewrite our lives. "Bitter Holidays" is a special gift for those who grew up with the cinema of the Spanish master – from "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", through "All About My Mother" and "Talk to Her", to "Volver", "Broken Embraces" and "Pain and Glory". It is also a film that goes one step further: it shows even more powerfully that each of us not only lives our own story, but endlessly tells it to ourselves. Almodóvar offers here a moving profession of faith in the power of cinema, memory and narrative.