Antonio Banderas plays a famous film director who is later in life, and he has a number of physical ailments that have caused an artistic block. He is unable to work. The implication is that Banderas is a stand in for Aldomovar himself, looking back over his career and evaluating the people he has lost touch with, as well as the people he has lost. There are persistent flashbacks to his childhood, the place that he came from and escaped, and the things that might have come with him into his work from there.
At first, the director is very self consumed. He has both pain and an inability to swallow, which has led to a significant weight loss, as well as a sense of defeat. He even turns to heroin to ease the pain, but relatively quickly decides that this is not going to go well, even in the short run. Friends try to help him, and finally something clicks and he turns a corner.
This is a soft and rough retrospective that ends with a sign and a smile. Beautifully rendered and unusually ordinary for the filmmaker, it is beautiful.
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