Can we be and have been? Almodóvar answers in the affirmative with this comedy which revives fairly closely with the trashy and light vein that irrigated the films of his debut, from “Pepi, Luci, Bom and other girls from the neighborhood” to “Women on the verge of crisis of nerves”. As an old fox aware of his legend, the filmmaker allows himself this recreational break with a subtle introduction, as if to emphasize that the action that will follow will remain only a more modest parenthesis between two prestigious productions, his daily life since “Heels needles”. We see Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas stay on the runway of an airport and provoke in spite of themselves the incident which will trigger the raison d’être of this film in which they will not participate, resolutely too stars to integrate such an adventure. What is it ?
Singing and tequila
The crossover of small colorful characters pouring out on themselves in the cabin of an airplane forced to turn in circles because of technical failure. There is a clairvoyant who would finally like to cherish the prospect of experiencing physical love (Lola Dueñas), a crew of gay stewards who gossip and whistle tequilas, a cantankerous and paranoid ex-playmate (the faithful Cecilia Roth) or a smooth talker in a hurry to call his fiancée who remained on the ground. Almodóvar briefly quotes “Emmanuelle”, remembered for its sequence of aerial frolics, without leaving anything to chance: all the interest of his film consists precisely in daydreaming about everything and nothing like a suspended long-haul traveler in the midst of a swarm of strangers, stuck between two points on the globe and two priorities in his life.
Thus, the fertile brain of the passenger-filmmaker reviews the major motifs of his work, articulating a myriad of amorous combinations, very beautiful poetic images (the layer of dry ice), gags and other simple but effective comic springs ( device phone stuck on speakerphone, mescaline trip). We can see there a way of rehashing, which nevertheless testifies to an unmistakable appetite for cinema, perceptible in each shot.
Thursday May 11 at 10:35 p.m. on Ciné+ Emotion. Spanish comedy by Pedro Almodóvar (2013). With Javier Camara, Cecilia Roth, Lola Dueñas. 1h30. (Multicast and On Demand).
