Opens Nov. 20
What director has not fallen in love with his leading lady? It's almost obligatory: if he doesn't see her beauty and passion, how can the audience? Pedro Almodóvar saw that spark early in Penélope Cruz, casting her in important supporting roles in the 1997 Live Flesh and the 1999 All About My Mother, then as the star of Volver three years ago. Now comes the study of a star whose memory haunts her director (Lluis Homar). Almodóvar may be the world's most vivacious filmmaker, but he makes films preoccupied with death. Mortality is not just the spur of melodrama, his favorite dramatic form; it also underlines the secret of movies: that the image lives on long after it's shot. Thus the indelible message of Broken Embraces, that love doesn't end when a loved one dies.