Legendary Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar wrestles with the weight of his profession. So many of his films feature, either as protagonist or major supporting character, a gay Spanish filmmaker grappling with traumatic childhoods, or the suffocating stink of artistic challenge, or, as in his last truly great film, “Pain and Glory,” the ache of feeling like your most creative days are behind you, and that you’ll spend more time collecting accolades than actually making something. His latest, “Bitter Christmas,” continues in that auto-fictional tradition, perhaps in its most self-conscious way yet. But by leaning so hard into self-critique, Almodóvar sometimes forgets the element that makes his best films so invigorating to watch: Passion.
Instead, we get a multi-pronged tale of artistic frustration, centered on a migraine-addled director in 2004 named Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), who makes her living in advertising after directing two failed films that nonetheless have a cult following. Her commercial work is obviously lucrative—just look at her home, decked out in typical Almodóvar fashion with brightly colored mid-century modern furniture—but her lack of artistic success eats away at her, despite the warmth and support of her attractive firefighter/stripper boyfriend, Beau (Patrick Criado). The migraines even get so bad that she checks herself into a hospital she once shot a film in; naturally, she asks the doctors to put her in the hospital room of the character in the film who lived.
Not long into “Bitter Christmas” do we see Elsa for what she truly is: the 2026 invention of another writer-director, Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), who’s channeling his own self-critique into the screenplay we’ve been watching unfold. Like Almodóvar, he’s older and successful, living with a young, beautiful boyfriend named Santi (Quim Gutiérrez), whom he insists is nothing like the screenplay’s Beau, despite being inspired by him.
Unlike Elsa, Raúl is far more celebrated, though he can feel the creative juices starting to run out. Ergo, he finds himself using the lives of those around him in his screenplay—not just himself, but his assistant of twenty years, Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), whose personal trials involving ex-girlfriends, suicide attempts, and dead sons find their way into Elsa’s fictional journey to revive herself in a long-overdue getaway on the volcanic island of Lanzarote.
Those black-sand beaches, the cacti, and the dry-stone walls (or zocos) that protect crops from wind, are just some of the visual delights Almodóvar offers us. Beyond the predictably droolworthy decor, the characters sport exceedingly cozy sweaters while lying on their lime-green couches to listen to a record of Chavela Vargas croaking out “La Llorona” in the last days of her failing singing voice; it’s all charmingly diverting from scene to scene. (As is one of the film’s gentlest moments, in which Elsa and Beau fall asleep at a party on the bed everyone’s thrown their coats, only to be awoken by a friend who sings her a song to cheer her up.)
But these diversions feel thinner than ever, especially as “Bitter Christmas” waits till its final act to truly turn the screws on Raúl and his self-delusions about using his friend’s lives to fuel his art. When Mónica learns of the similarities between her and Elsa’s friends Patricia (Victoria Luengo) and Natalia (Milena Smit), both women Elsa needs to support or save in some way, she confronts Raúl about such blatant theft. “It’s hard to write a story that fits,” he complains, which doesn’t excuse him from accusations of “vampir[ing]” his loved ones into his scripts. It’s sizzling stuff, especially in the final minutes. But it’s hard not to feel frustrated that it’s truly taken this long to get here, and that its final thought on the matter is an ambivalent shrug.
“Bitter Christmas” has plenty for the well-traveled Almodóvar fan: bright pops of color, enviable interior design porn, and sumptuous swims through rivers of melodrama. Alberto Iglesias’ playful score marches through each twist and turn in Elsa and Raúl’s metafictional artistic gambits, and the cast is full of newcomers to the director and Pedro stalwarts (including a brassy Rossy de Palma as Elsa’s pill-dealing friend).
But it’s hard not to feel that, like Raúl himself, Almodóvar is running out of steam, and simply making a film to express those anxieties. And the line between pointing out one’s shortcomings and making something intriguing out of them is gossamer-thin. Of this new work, Raúl shrugs and says that it’ll be “a minor film” of his, “and people will be grateful,” the way they are about Fellini and Bergman’s lesser-regarded works. It’s a self-effacing jab, of course, but it’s hard not to feel he’s trying to have his Christmas goose and eat it too. And the taste isn’t quite as sweet as it usually is.
This film was reviewed from the premiere at the New York Film Festival. It will premiere in America on November 13th.
