Broken Embraces (Spanish: Los abrazos rotos) is a 2009 Spanish film written, produced, and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Led by an ensemble cast consisting of many Almodóvar regulars, it stars Lluís Homar as a blind Madrilenian screenwriter who recalls his tragical love for Lena, played by Penélope Cruz, the deceased lead actress in his last directional feature Girls and Suitcases, who was also the mistress of a powerful, obsessive businessman (José Luis Gómez). Blanca Portillo co-stars as his agent Judit, while Tamar Novas portrays her son and Caine's co-writer Diego.
Inspired by darkness and by a photo of a couple, that Almodóvar took of El Golfo beach in Lanzarote in the late 1990s, the film serves as an homage to filmmaking, cinema and its various film genres. Stylistically, it is a complex noirish melodrama, that also blends comic elements with a film within a film—a broad comedy, that hearkens back to Almodóvar's 1988 release, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Thematically, Broken Embraces addresses themes like voyeurism, repression, prostitution, death, vengeance, fixation, illness, and drugs.
Broken Embraces was one of the films competing for the Palme d'Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Dubbed "purest Almodóvar" by The New Yorker, the film was noted for the director's characteristic "bright primary colors," erotic subject matter, and meticulous, "visually pulsating" cinematography. The picture was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at both the 2009 British Academy Film Awards and the 67th Golden Globe Awards.
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