Almodóvar’s Most Personal Self-Questioning

More than a dozen white vases stand neatly lined up on a wall shelf in Elsa’s living room. The former director is beset by a fierce migraine. She asks her partner Bonifacio to take her to the hospital. Her condition, not only because of the headache, is as fragile as the ceramic behind her. A symbolic image, one that Pedro Almodóvar handles with such mastery that few others can match.

She is quickly helped, but she should stay overnight in the clinic. Her significantly younger boyfriend stays by her side. He is a firefighter and a stripper. The curious doctor finds him familiar — from a bachelorette party, as it turns out. And the patient herself already knows her. Years ago Elsa shot a film in exactly the room where she is being treated now.

“Bitter Feast” circles around him

It is 2004, and flip phones are in use. In this year, director Raúl begins telling the story of the director Elsa, whom he is working on in the present. Raúl Durán is a celebrated filmmaker. He is supposed to receive a queer prize, his assistant Mónica explains to him. And he is invited to a film festival in Qatar, but he declines. He could think it over—the Gulf state pays well. He hasn’t directed a film in a while.

With “Bitter Feast” the Spanish elder statesman Pedro Almodóvar, now 76, tells another autobiographical tale. Yet perhaps no other film has circled him as much as this one does now.

Creative Freedom or Shameless Exploitation?

Because essentially he lets his alter ego Raúl write a screenplay in which the main character Elsa bears a clear resemblance to him: Almodóvar directs a film about Almodóvar who then makes a film about Almodóvar.

In doing so, he crafts a tragicomedy that is above all a meditation on filmmaking and on creative freedom: Raúl generously borrows from a story his assistant Mónica told him about her partner. How far can artists go? What counts as inspiration, and what counts as shamelessly servicing others’ narratives?

The Victims of a Filmmaker

Raúl has a clear answer: the film is fiction, so everything is allowed. He can only work with absolute artistic freedom. Mónica, however, is furious with him, with whom she has worked for decades.

“Bitter Feast” can also be read as self-criticism: a parable about the personal sacrifices a filmmaker must be willing to make to bring the stories he deems important to the screen. The gay cult director himself has said it was the film in which “I was hardest on myself.”

All of this is intriguing on a meta level. The two parallel narrative strands — especially the one about Elsa — are too long-winded to truly grip. A real connection to Elsa doesn’t really emerge.

A Fascinating Construction of Self-Questioning
“Bitter Feast” obviously looks fabulous: the colors glow, even when everything else is dark. The dark green is richer than elsewhere, the red Jeep shines amid Lanzarote’s black beaches. Fabrics, textures, and patterns perfect the Almodóvar look. And the characters’ apartments are as generous and stylish as one expects from him.

A string orchestra rages in the dramatic moments, the music sounding almost hectic and insistent. Yet no matter how loud the violins, they cannot drown out the film’s weaknesses in substance. The construction of self-questioning fascinates more than it moves emotionally.