Los Abrazos Rotos

Today I finally watched 'Broken Embraces'. A film directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring the amazingly beautiful Penélope Cruz.

I saw a poster for the film at my local museum a couple of months ago, the movie poster itself was very striking, and simple. The image, which I love, doesn't necessarily give much away about the film, although the image plays with main colour of teh film The image looks almost Andy Warhol-esque, it really is stunning and shows the prodominant colour of the film, intense red. Anyway, so I bought the DVD instead and after watching it I really do wish I could have seen it at the cinema.

The film, visually was stunning. Penelope always looked incredible. Her character: a mistress to a man with a huge obsession is a woman with attitude, but one who is inlove and is caught in a jealous and aggressive relationship with a highly wealthy, well known business man. The film was very inspiring, I love looking at films for inspiration for photoshoots and styling ideas. With this film, as with many, I love how the costume designer, Sonia Grande, really used the characters' clothing as a tool to the scene. The art director too, Víctor Molero, has amazing visual talent.

My favourite part of the film has to be when Penelope is sat in hair and make-up just before shooting the film, preparing for her role and the team are playing around with hair ideas and almost making Penelope look like a replica of Audrey Hepburn: it's amazing how much a wig and change of make-up can really evoke a character. The lighting in the film really enhanced the clothing and the lucious colours: it reminded me almost of Juergen Teller's imagery, with his clean and clear sharp white light fashion photography. Another visual I noticed was the art directors choice of showing certain details but highlighting them more prominently, for instance when Mateo (the film director in the film) is filming his film and the camera highlights her surroundings, to really build up a character, I really like this and like applying it to the photoshoots I do. Whilst watching the film I just couldn't help but link the visual of the film to an older post of mine, where I looked at Robert Doisneau:Plam Springs 1960 collection, the colours and the fashion choices sent me write back to those images.

I loved the film visually and the plot of the film too, I just wish I could speak Spanish so I didn't have to read the credits and then I would be able to just devoir the visuals of the film.