In Bitter Christmas, writer-director Pedro Almodóvar explores the ethics of turning someone else’s life into art. And he does so by embedding a movie within a movie.
We start out following Elsa (Barbara Lennie) in 2004. Elsa is a filmmaker early in her career, facing issues with her job direction, her relationship with her boyfriend and drama in the lives of her gal pals.
Eventually, we learn that Elsa’s story is a screenplay being written in 2025 by the filmmaker Raul (Leonardo Sabaraglia). Raul has intended to write a script based on his own panic attack in 2004, and the fictional Elsa is his alter ego. He’s experiencing difficulty in putting his story together, and now his longtime assistant Monica (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) is taking an indefinite sabbatical. Monica will be the emotional support of a friend who has experienced a tragic loss.
Bitter Christmas toggles between the 2025 story and the 2004 story Raul is inventing. Raul’s story starts absorbing occurrences in the real lives of Monica and her friends. Is it a betrayal? A violation of privacy? An inspiration for art? Eventually Monica will confront Raul.
Pedro Almodóvar is one of the filmmakers that I admire the most, but Bitter Christmas is not one of his masterpieces like Talk to Her or Broken Embraces. Still, even minor Almodovar is good. As usual, the melodrama is vivid and the female performances are outstanding.
Bitter Christmas played at Cannes, and I screened it for the Mill Valley Film Festival. It opens in theaters this weekend.