Spanish Cinema

In his new film, "Bitter Christmas," Pedro Almodóvar returns to the themes that have occupied him throughout his career - the pain of creation, motherhood, loss, and the way artists feed on the lives of others. The result is aesthetic, occasionally enjoyable, and highly self-aware, but it also sometimes feels like the work of a director who has already asked himself the same questions - and did so...

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.