‘Pain and Glory’: How Antonio Banderas and Pedro Almodóvar Made the Year’s Most Beautifully Tender Movie
During one of the first days of shooting on Pain and Glory, filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar pulled his star Antonio Banderas to the side. “I don’t know how to describe it, but there’s something slightly different in your persona,” he told him. “Don’t hide it for the character. Use it. We are talking about pain.”
Pain and Glory marks the eighth collaboration between the legendary Spanish filmmaker and his muse. It centers on Salvador Mallo (Banderas, sporting Almodóvar’s signature spiky hair), a filmmaker in the twilight of his career whose struggles with chronic pain and creative ennui cause him to re-examine the seminal moments of his life, from his sexual awakening as a boy in 1960s Paterna to his torrid affair with Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia) in ‘80s Madrid. Both contend it is their most personal work yet.
“My sense of Antonio these days is that, because of things that have happened in his life, he has become more sensible and sensitive to certain things,” Almodóvar says of Banderas’ remarkably tender turn. “Something deep in him changed for the better.”
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