If you’re not already familiar with the films of Pedro Almodovar, this is a good time to update your lame, anemic Netflix queue. The guy makes movies that are often amazing and always worth seeing and his stuff is all too frequently overlooked in the United States.
Maybe his next movie will get more attention, not because it stars the gorgeous Penelope Cruz, but because it’s a genre that so many of us love: a noir. (Though this isn’t exactly his first, if you count Bad Education.) Broken Hugs isn’t exactly the most shadowy title around, but Almodovar doesn’t often do things the typical way.
The director rarely gives out a lot of story details in advance, but he’s saying this is his longest script ever, and that it’s about a ‘crazy love’. Blanca Portillo and Lluis Homar will also feature, and supposedly the film will "delve into one of [Cruz’s] little-known facets".
Almodovar had previously stated he was going to adapt Thierry Jonquet’s 1995 novel Mygale into the film El Piel Que Habito (The Skin I Live In), also with Cruz starring. That would have been a very loose adaptation, reportedly retaining only one scene from the book about a plastic surgeon taking revenge on his daughter’s rapist.