Not at all at his peak: Almodovar's new film manages to disappoint
Pedro Almodovar's new film, "Merry Christmas," is a pleasant but unfinished work—a film within a film that needed a few more drafts before production. But that's okay, because Almodovar likely already knows we thought that; he thought of it first.
In one of the countless argument scenes in the series "Girls," Hannah, played by the series' creator Lena Dunham, says: "Everything bad that anyone could think to say about me, I've already said to myself, about myself, probably in the last half hour." Pedro Almodovar's new film, "Merry Christmas," expands this way of thinking into a full-length feature. The veteran Spanish director wants you to know that he has already heard everything you have to say about his late work, thank you very much. He knows his career is appreciated, but he also knows his peak is behind him. He knows the cinematic map has changed and that everyone is working with Netflix now. He knows that his recent works lack the measure of passion and urgency that characterized his early films. He probably even wrote in his head the review I am writing at this very moment. How meta, right?
"Merry Christmas" is a kind of guided tour by the director through the labyrinth of mirrors that is his mind. It takes place in 2004 and centers on a director named Elsa, who in the past achieved success as a creator of strange cult films but crossed the line into directing commercials. Her financial success allows her, as befits an Almodovar character, to experience her existential crises in a designed and colorful apartment. At work, she meets and begins a relationship with a man younger than her—a firefighter who also moonlights as a stripper. Her comfortable daily routine is disrupted by severe migraines and anxiety attacks that begin to plague her, likely as an echo of the grief over her mother's death, which she insists on suppressing and drowning in work. The solution: a vacation trip with a close friend who is in a crisis of her own, where she can also work on a script for a new film.
But wait, actually the film has a completely different hero—Raul, a veteran director who in 2026 is writing the film about Elsa, inspired by an especially anxious period in his life. Raul also has a young partner, he also struggles to complete his new script, and it seems he solves it by having all the characters he writes also talk about films. When the heroine of his pen arrives at the hospital with a searing migraine, she is bothered by the fact that she will be hospitalized in the room where a fictional patient died in a film she shot there.
Like Elsa, who blurs the line between location and just a room, and between art and reality, Almodovar fills the new film with correspondences to his previous works. Character traits, castings, music, locations, themes, and more return for a visit as echoes of his body of work. All this builds towards a final and dramatic act in which Raul confronts his veteran personal assistant about everything good and bad in his current work. Before the camera, the character is furious because her close friend used her friend's tragedy to add interest to his script, but the anger is also directed at the director behind the camera. Is the power that creation gives the creator—the god-like power that can create and change entire worlds—actually a corrupting power? When it comes to a prolific creator like Almodovar, who at any given moment has a new film or two in the pipeline, maybe writing is already a kind of megalomania? A constant state of consciousness of detachment from the environment, where all his friends and relatives are also a source of inspiration that can be exploited and replicated?
All these are interesting ideas worthy of cinematic discussion, but besides ideas, there is also a film here that one actually has to sit and watch. This internal symposium often prevents the plot from coalescing into a story that is interesting to follow. This is true regarding the plot of the film-within-a-film, which changes and is interrupted every time without all the characters who appeared before having time to catch up on these changes. It's a bit chaotic, but more like a collection of unfinished stories devoid of a point than a work where chaos is its main concern. This is even more true in the meeting between it and the frame story, because the script the hero writes inspired by those around him is much more interesting than his own story. It's not a brilliant work, heaven forbid, but it has more momentum, more interesting characters, and we mainly see more of it. That is, Almodovar introduces us to some interesting characters, makes us laugh, and intrigues us about what will happen to them next, before he cuts again and again to interpretations from the stands, courtesy of other, less interesting characters we barely have time to get to know.
Beyond the yellow aspect of attempts to compare between director, director, and director, or the plethora of winks to devoted fans, there is not much added value to all this cleverness. Asking questions about creation and inspiration is great, but one also needs to answer—and the answers of such a skilled and seasoned screenwriter should be more impressive. The internal confrontation comes so late into the story(ies) that there is no time left to deal with its results, and that's a pity, because that's the moment when Raul even begins to justify his existence. So in practice, we simply saw a nice but unfinished film, inside a film that should have gone through a few more drafts before going into production. But that's okay, because Almodovar probably already knows we thought that; he thought of it first.
