I got to DCA in time to get an IPA from the bar to take into the film. The trailers and the crass pre-film ads seemed to pass by quicker than usual.

It was a Friday afternoon showing of Pedro Almodovar’s ‘Pain and Glory’, starring Antonio Banderas as world-weary film director Salvador Mallo. The character’s name is almost an anagram of Almodovar, signalling the autobiographical nature of the film.

Banderas gives a wonderful low-key performance, his character a successful wealthy man stuck in a rut of melancholy reflections and chronic ill-health.

When Mallo recites his litany of ailments, those medical conditions are illustrated by a series of infographics, a jarringly surreal visual intrusion exemplifying the dry deadpan humour that flows under the surface of this brilliant and touching film.

Mallo seems to have accepted his solitude. When a famous art museum asks him for the loan of two of paintings for an exhibition, he refuses because the paintings – rather than any human beings – are  the companions he lives with.

Asier Etxeandia, Penelope Cruz and Leonardo Sbaraglia all give great supporting performances. 

As the actor Alberto Crespo, who worked with Mallo thirty years previously but who has been estranged from him since that time, Etxeandia is mesmerising when he performs a monologue written by Mallo on the subject of addiction and loss. This performance leads to a downbeat but emotionally charged reunion between Mallo and Federico, Mallo’s former lover.

The new life that Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia) has made for himself in Argentina, building a business and starting a family, stands in sharp contrast to the hermetic existence that Mallo has chosen to live in his chic, stylish, lonely Madrid apartment.  

Almodovar gives a final wink to the audience in a scene near the end of ‘Pain and Glory’ where the camera pulls back to reveal a boom operator standing to the side of the two actors in that scene.

After this hugely enjoyable film we nipped across the street to Beer Kitchen for a quick meal of chicken confit, ‘Tofish’ (a surprisingly good tofu version of a fish supper), sweet potato fries and market salad washed down by Gunnpowder IPA and a wheat beer.

Well fed, we emerged from Beer Kitchen around 8pm and headed home. It was a still and mild evening, with great views of the River Tay and the hills of Fife in the distance.

Related Posts: ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’, Cinema Vendôme, Brussels, Belgium; ‘The Great Beauty’, Curzon Renoir, London

The post ‘Pain and Glory’, DCA, Dundee appeared first on Silver Screen Cities: Celebrating city cinema-going.