Pain and Glory

"A masterful, melancholy, tender, lacerating self-examination, filled with colour and light and the ghosts of those he has loved. Almodovar at 70, and perhaps astonishing to himself, continues to grow."

"Pain and Glory is a beautiful film. It is savagely funny at times, achingly melancholic at others. If you are a fan of Almodovar already, just know that this is one of his strongest films of the last decade at least."

"A mature work of meticulously tuned meta-fiction..."

"Everything about Pain and Glory is awake and alive, and Almodóvar's nerve endings become ours, too."

"The hangdog expression is riven with pain, and [Banderas] plays Mallo as emotionally cauterised yet beneath it all still desperate to connect, to love and to make more films."

"There is something incomplete or unfinished in this work, but perhaps this simply represents the condition of life itself. Pain and Glory leaves you with a sweet sadness, but a sharp appetite for the next film."

"The effect is a patchwork rather than an interwoven whole; the wistfully self-reflexive tone will appeal to fans of the less emphatic, more meditative end of the Almodovar spectrum."

"However loosely "Pain and Glory" may play with the facts, it never feels less than truthful."

"Indeed watching the film, which is more about pain than glory, sometimes feels a little too much like a couple of hours in the company of your ailing, aged aunt: You feel her pain, but you wish she wouldn't go on about it so much."