Almodóvar’s Strange Way of Life [Review]
Film Still, Strange Way of Life, Sony Pictures Classics.
Filmmakers have power. “There’s something very particular about being both a director and writer. It is that it endows you with a kind of power, and I am not talking about any kind of political power, but something more like an ideological power. It allows you to impose on your stories and the world you’re creating, the vision that you want,” said Pedro Almodóvar, arguably Spain’s most famous auteur, put it aptly on Dua Lipa’s podcast, At Your Service.
But he’s incorrect about one thing: Filmmakers do hold a significant amount of political power. Ideological fantasies imposed upon films affect how audiences leaving the theater see their realities. And these perspectives, however minutely or grandiosely changed, affect how human beings treat other human beings in the world, whether in the checkout line at the supermarket or on the political stage.
Almodóvar’s latest film, Strange Way of Life — a 30-minute English-language Western starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal — muffles what could have been an interesting exploration of queerness under glossy brand promotion and upholds harmful stereotypes of Latinxs within a genre that celebrates the colonization of Mexican territories in the West, first by Spain then white Americans.
Strange Way of Life premiered at the 76th annual Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2023, in France; Sony Pictures Classic then released the short in the U.S. in October.
Hawke plays Jake, the moody sheriff of Bitter Creek, a town somewhere in the American Southwest. Though there’s no specified date, the film probably takes place, like most American Westerns, in the second half of the 19th century after the Mexican War of Independence from Spain in 1821 and the Mexican-American War in 1848, which resulted in the U.S. claiming more than 500,000 square miles of Mexican territory.
Jake’s late brother’s wife has been murdered, and her boyfriend, Joe, is the prime suspect. Just as Jake is about to make an arrest, Silva, a sensitive Mexican ranchero played by Pascal, rides into town, inciting a strained romantic reunion between the two, 25 years in the making. The morning after love-making, a confrontation between Silva and Jake reveals Silva’s ulterior motive – Joe is his son and he’s come to help him escape. As Silva and Jake both break for Joe’s, they separately reminisce on their long-ago love affair, shown in flashbacks that find younger Silva and Jake – played by José Condessa and Jason Fernández, respectively – giving into their lust for one another in a youthfully innocent sequence. The men kiss passionately, alternately attempting to unbuckle the other’s belt and failing.
Luxury fashion brand Saint Laurent produced Strange Way of Life, with the brand’s creative director Anthony Vaccarello serving as its costume designer. It’s in this sequence that Saint Laurent’s influence is seen most clearly. Within an already too-polished present, the flashbacks, featuring airbrushed-looking male models donning perfectly tailored clothes, indicate an aesthetic ideal Almodóvar has spoken about in various interviews. After the New York Film Festival’s September 30th screening at Lincoln Center, Almodóvar explained, “I didn’t want it to feel real but to recall the other movies in this genre…how Hollywood represented the West.” A representation of a representation. The result of which is an emotionally dull, aesthetically pompous brand advertisement maintaining the most base clichés of an antiquated genre that has had far more interesting reinterpretations by female directors in recent years such as in The Power of the Dog by Jane Campion, The Rider by Chloé Zhao, or First Cow by Kelly Reichardt.
Departing from his usual, more interesting genre-bending, Almodóvar was staunch in his reverence of the American Western for Strange Way of Life. In a conversation with Toronto International Film Festival CEO Cameron Bailey Almodóvar said, “I wanted to be very respectful because it doesn’t belong to my culture; it belongs to a very different culture than mine. I didn’t want it to fall to anachronisms.”
What, really, does this care for upholding a romanticized American past achieve other than reemphasizing its most oppressive characteristics? What Almodóvar might have experienced as a fun exercise in a new genre maintained regressive stereotypes of Latinxs in a moment where Latinx representation in film and television is dire. According to a new diversity report from the Latino Donor Collaborative, a nonprofit that researches the Latinx community in the U.S., only 3.3% of leads on screen are Latinx.
Now is the time to ruthlessly scrutinize why we are so far behind and what filmmakers with power are doing to either move the needle forward or keep it maddeningly regressive.
Principal photography for Strange Way of Life took place in Southern Spain’s Amería region where, in 1966, Italian film director Sergio Leone filmed one of the most famous films in the Spaghetti Western sub-genre, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly –one Almodóvar says served as inspiration for his film. In The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Eli Wallach, a white American, portrays “Tuco,” a Mexican alcoholic and money-hungry bandit on the run in brown face.
Unfortunately, almost half a century later, not much has changed in Almodóvar’s take – when Silva arrives at his son Joe’s house, Joe is drunk and unremorseful of his violent crime. Silva orders him to flee to Mexico on his horse. Outside, Jake arrives. Soon, the three are in a standoff, aiming their guns at one another. Silva eventually takes a shot at Jake, taking him down. Joe rides off into the horizon, free.
Silva helps Jake into the house and tends to his wounds. Jake, angry at first, eventually gives in to Silva’s care. As the sun sets, Silva recalls Jake asking him in their youth what two men could do together on a ranch alone. In Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger’s character Ennis del Mar poses that same question to Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist. Almodóvar says Strange Way of Life is his answer to Ennis del Mar’s inquiry. In the end, Silva tells Jake they could take care of one another.
Two decades ago, Almodóvar turned down the opportunity to direct Brokeback Mountain. He claimed he wouldn’t have had the freedom to show the “animalistic” connection between the two leads. “It was a Hollywood movie. You could not have these two guys fucking all the time,” he told IndieWire.
Curiously, then, Strange Way of Life is incongruous with Almodóvar’s onscreen queer ideal. The film fades out just before Jake and Silva’s physicality becomes anything more than innuendo.
Jake’s tense seriousness steeped in internalized homophobia – above his bed hangs a portrait of a naked woman in a forced show of heteromasculinity – never quite gives way to Silva’s overt passion, itself reinforcing an accented Latin lover cliché. The two straight actors, stuck in tired tropes, overact restrained yearning. Their younger selves get more handsy but their shy clumsiness and inability to get in each others’ pants doesn’t suggest a primal desire either.
Almodóvar claimed he stayed away from Hollywood because of his goal to represent desire in its most carnal form, but his partnership with a high-profile fashion brand – with interests of its own – didn’t exactly result in sexual liberation. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine true physical freedom from a production concerned with conveying its brand’s clothes in an attractive way. Vaccarello explained to the fashion outlet Women’s Wear Daily that Saint Laurent’s new production banner, the first of its kind, is a “new approach to maybe get new Saint Laurent customers.”
Almodóvar’s exploration of queerness within the Western is somewhat novel, despite compelling takes in two films he mentions in various interviews, The Power of the Dog and Brokeback Mountain, and more subtle hints in earlier films like in 1959’s Warlock starring Anthony Quinn and Henry Fonda in a depiction of close male friendship of intimate dedication. But a focus on one marginalized group while ignoring important implications of the depiction of another is a disheartening missed opportunity, especially given Almodóvar’s politically driven beginnings.
Almodóvar began making movies in response to the end of Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in Spain as part of La Movida Madrileña, a progressive countercultural movement. His wildly entertaining films were a free expression of previously oppressed joy and sexual prowess.
In his conversation with TIFF’s Bailey he says, “In the beginning of my career, I lived surrounded by people living a vibrant life, and now I live a much more solitary life and you see that reflected in my films.”
Almodóvar makes Spanish movies about Spaniards. He has made exceptional films giving audiences unique insights into Spanish life through melodrama, comedy, and tragedy. And yet, his one-dimensional foray into a foreign genre displays this self-described isolation within Spain — a country partly responsible for Mexicans’ oppression in the United States.
Is Almodóvar himself a white colonist aiming to oppress? No. But his lack of curiosity regarding the Latinx experience represents a larger detachment white folks from historically colonizing nations may harbor.
As a gay man with a fascination for women and female relationships, Almodóvar has made many movies moving the needle forward when it comes to nuanced female and LGBTQ representation.
In interviews about Strange Way of Life, Almodóvar’s genuine curiosity about queer representation not only in filmmaking but other professions like sports is endearingly apparent. It’s clear his drive for forwarding nuanced representations on that front comes from a personal desire to see queerness living, breathing, and free not only on screen but out in the world around him. He has a clear vision for a future wherein queer men can live openly and proudly even in the most repressed sectors of life.
It’s a shame this vision didn’t extend to include that same fullness of a future for Latin Americans. “The Latin population is the largest minority in the U.S…and yet they’re the most underrepresented group in media,” writes Christy Piña of the Hollywood Reporter.
Underrepresentation of Latin Americans in media leads to a skewed and limited view of the many Latinxs who live in the United States. Contemporary politicians have stoked dangerous narratives around Latinxs in this country that have led to very real acts of violence against them.
Almodóvar’s decision to cast Pedro Pascal as an accented Latin-lover type freeing his drunken criminal Latino son from the grips of white law enforcement wouldn’t be so infuriating if it was just one drop in the well of a complex array of Latinx folks in media. But it’s not. And so attention must be paid.
Pedro Pascal’s involvement as a Chilean-American means he’s also portraying a community to which he doesn’t belong. As an actor otherwise breaking the mold in Latinx representation by portraying non-accented, non-clichéd characters such as Joel in The Last of Us, Pascal’s lack of nuance in playing Silva brought a particular disappointment.
Almodóvar isn’t excluded from underrepresentation himself. Hispanic people are also at a historic low in terms of representation in U.S. cinema. But his power and influence as an established and respected filmmaker sets him apart in a significant way. In his work, he has an opportunity to commiserate with Latinxs and fight alongside them for a better future for all.
Audiences today are more actively engaged with the oppressions and conflicts of today’s staggeringly unjust world. Established artists with a platform have a choice: Turn away from that conversation or meaningfully engage. Cinema provides a vision of the world to the world. It’s vitally important that those who choose to portray it recognize the urgency inherent in this enterprise, especially those working at an international scale. Filmmakers have power. Almodóvar chose to depict folks whose lives he doesn’t intimately know and the result was regressive for Latinxs. A more informed enthusiasm for Latinx inclusion from influential white filmmakers would be nice but really, the most powerful and nuanced representation will always come from underrepresented groups telling their own stories. The more we can look at this power in its 360 degrees of possibility and support authentic voices shaping their own narratives, the more we will all benefit from their more equitable ideology.
Adriana Santos is a Colombian-American playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and actor from Miami, FL. She holds a BFA in Drama from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in Playwriting from The Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s University in Brooklyn. Her full-length plays, including Catholic All Girls School, have been presented in New York, LA and regionally. A TV series adaptation of Catholic All Girls School was an official selection of The Gotham Film and Media Institute’s Project Week and is currently in development with a major production company. Adriana’s work aims to specify an experience of not fitting into “Latina” stereotypes or white American ways of life yet feeling both wholly Latina and American at the same time. She also has a particular passion for depicting a nuanced, modern-day Miami.