Bitter Christmas

Check out IN THE MOOD FOR ALMODÓVAR, our limited series celebrating three earlier works by Pedro Almodóvar.

The incomparable Almodóvar has been rendering the life of the creative mind on screen for five decades, with exquisite attention to every nuance of both aesthetic design and human emotion. With his complexly conceived latest, he uses a metacinematic framework to explore the artist’s tenuous relationship between fiction and reality. The sublimely expressive Bárbara Lennie stars as Elsa, a well-known actress suffering from debilitating migraines whose directorial efforts had failed upon release but have become cult classics. While trying to maintain a relationship with her loyal boyfriend Bonifacio (Patrick Criado), a fireman moonlighting as a stripper, she becomes inspired by the travails of her friends to write a new script.

Yet Elsa’s story is itself a story—being written by Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), an Almodóvar-esque filmmaker who is, in turn, taking his cues from the lives of those around him. Mixing the irreverence of early Almodóvar with the somber melodrama of his later work, Bitter Christmas insightfully details the vampiric nature of artistic creation and how we use fiction to try and right the wrongs of our lives.

“With its moving musical interludes, comic patter and outrageously chic production design, Bitter Christmas is another dazzling, late-period jewel” — Little White Lies

More showtimes coming soon