He has always been an orphan of the Palme d’Or. Injustice! Sometimes, we thought: “This time, the case is in the bag.” Now is his time! When Pedro Almodóvar competed in Cannes with all about my mother Or Speak with her, among others. Alas! At the cutting edge of the prize list, the brilliant statuette fell into the basket of another. He regained his place in the race, sometimes awarded, never up to his expectations. This time on the Croisette with a light heart, freed from the pressure of waiting, the Spanish master emerges with a 31-minute short film with an open ending. Strange Way of Life (Extraña forma de vida), western in English, plays and diverts the codes of the genre. Both classic and stuck to the universe of the filmmaker of Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But we feel less comfortable than in his usual areas. His script isn’t always perfect.
For this strange film object, Anthony Vaccarello, artistic director at Yves Saint-Laurent, designed the cowboy costumes. Almodóvar, with his usual attention to detail, makes interior objects speak. But while the men on horseback brave hostile territory and shoot guns like in John Ford’s films, the heroes have homosexual love scenes.
Two former lovers, played by American Ethan Hawke and Chilean Pedro Pascal reunite after a quarter of a century. One became sheriff (Hawke), the other (Pascal) desperado arriving from nowhere to save his son from the clutches of justice. This does not prevent them from hugging, while secrets are revealed.
After the screening, Pedro Almodóvar took the stage alongside Ethan Hawke. The chic and full Debussy room offered them a welcoming committee. He whitened, over the years, the filmmaker. His fragile health makes him more shaky than before. But the same sensitive sensitivity emanates from his being.
The sensuality of everyday life
“It’s an abstract western,” he tells us. It looks like two men meet to love each other. In fact, everyone has hidden motives for being there. My film is different from Brokeback Mountain of Ang Lee, where gay love scenes remained covered. Similarly, Jane Campion filmed an ambivalent hero in The Power of the Dog, without him and the young man having sex, of course. Here I address the raw desire between two cowboys. No need for me to show naked bodies. Looks and words express this sensuality. We had never seen on the big screen two men making the bed. The underwear is shown, Jake has cooked a stew. It is important to highlight the daily life of two men in intimacy. So many taboos remain to be overcome.
Almodóvar was aware of venturing into the American imagination through the archetypal figures of the sheriff and the desperado. He refused to pay into the spaghetti western, feared more than anything to suffer reproaches for anachronistic details.
“I’ve seen a lot of westerns,” he says. Cowboys in classic cinema were always dressed to bear witness to the XIXe century in the same way. Dark clothes, string ties or a small neckerchief, sometimes a silk waistcoat. I was inspired by James Stewart, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas. I had been shown the real period costumes and underwear. They were dirty and ugly. Hollywood created the aesthetic of westerns. The Yves Saint-Laurent house did the rest.
While Pedro Pascal releases something carnal, the scenario writer liked the frozen and hermetic side of Ethan Hawke at which the fire broods under the ice. “He has a way of embodying the inherent tension between a person’s truth and what they want to be. The magic of the seventh art relies heavily on this ambiguity.
Hawke is a Texas actor and rides a horse. “I grew up with the omnipresent westerns in my culture, he reveals. They gave me access to myths and legends that penetrate other worlds. An admirer of Almodóvar, he told himself that he must have done something good in his life to earn the honor of playing under his direction. “The great filmmakers who have directed me, including Peter Weir, have an authentically original voice. Pedro doesn’t ape anyone either. »
In the eyes of the interpreter, cinema is always an act of love. From the moment a being sees himself captured by the camera, desire is at the center. To be desired is good, by the meticulous Almodóvar, it’s wonderful, by a partner as handsome and talented as Pedro Pascal, that suits me too. Like what desire is a wave. Cinema too.
Odile Tremblay is the guest of the Cannes Film Festival.