Penelope Cruz provides muse for Pedro Almodovar in Broken Embraces

Pedro Almodovar’s ” Broken Embraces” is as much a love letter to the works of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles as it is to his star, Penelope Cruz. It is about moviemakers, the creative process and the drama that surrounds them. When one character opines at the sight of his wounded lover that “People don’t fall down stairs — that only happens in films,” it’s because it just happened in a film. “Broken Embraces” is pure melodrama, and as is expected of Almodovar, it’s expertly done, thanks in no small part to the stunning chemistry the bard of Spanish filmmaking has with his favorite leading lady.

It is the kind of rare and special relationship between actor and director that makes film history — James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese and Robert Di Niro — in which each party makes the other work harder, work smarter and create more arresting art. Almodovar, who co-presented the Oscar for best foreign language film with Quentin Tarantino at this month’s ceremony, found his muse nearly a decade after his breakthrough film, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” Cruz, who spent most of her childhood training in dancing, singing and acting, had worked steadily in Spanish cinema for half a decade before being cast by Almodovar in 1997’s “Live Flesh.” While Almodovar had previously enjoyed a run of films with Spanish actress Victoria Abril, a distinct chemistry ignited when he began working regularly with Cruz, leading to a string of stunning collaborations including “All About My Mother,” “Volver” and “Broken Embraces.”

While Cruz experienced difficulty with her initial forays into U.S. films, there’s a solid argument to be made that by continuing her professional relationship with Almodovar, a superb and empathetic director of female actors, her own skills deepened considerably. Woody Allen asked Cruz to appear as Maria Elena, the tempestuous artist in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona, after seeing her in “Volver,” and the result was an Oscar win for Cruz.

In my 2008 interview with Cruz, she told me that her experiences with Almodovar and Allen could not be more contrasting, but a key to her collaborations was that they are both directors who are unusually sure-footed  — each knows exactly what they want from their performers.

“I love working with both of them,” Cruz said. “The systems they have for work couldn’t be more different, but I love both of them because you’re working with two geniuses. You have to get in their hands, trust them and experience that adventure — because it is an adventure working every time. Woody doesn’t rehearse at all. With Pedro, I rehearse three months.

“In every way, they couldn’t be more different, but it’s amazing that when you get so lucky to work with people who are so talented, it’s not that one system is better than the other,” she said. “They are so secure in what they need to do their best. You just have to ride that wave with them and enjoy it — it’s a privilege to know that you can trust your director.”

In “Broken Embraces,” which arrives on DVD today, a blind writer who calls himself Harry Caine (Lluis Homar) was once a respected filmmaker but now lives in the shadow of a great personal tragedy. While listening to a beautiful stranger read the newspaper, he learns that a powerful financier named Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez) has died. The terrible past begins flooding back into Harry’s life: a demanding stranger introduced as Ray X (Ruben Ochandiano) insists on meeting with him about a script, but his story idea sounds far too personal — and familiar.

In flashback, Almodovar unfolds the story of Lena (Cruz), who worked for Martel and then became indebted to him, emotionally and financially. A kept woman, Lena auditions for the latest film by Mateo Blanco, the man who will become Harry Caine. When she wins the role, the toxically jealous Martel insists on producing it to keep an eye on Lena and sends his pushover son to videotape a “making of” documentary — a ruse for doing some nasty spy work. When an affair is revealed, events spiral out of control, deals are made and lives are lost. Mateo’s film, like at least two of Welles’ great efforts, is botched with a bad edit, and a vicious attack leaves the director blind.

“Broken Embraces” is as torrid as it sounds, filled with passions that are pursued, lost and deferred, and it is most explicitly about the challenges of creativity. In this case, a money man didn’t just ruin Harry’s movie, he derailed his life. Almodovar telegraphs his themes throughout: The film Mateo/Harry was making closely resembles one of Almodovar’s most iconic works, the director has used “Mateo Blanco” as a pseudonym, and the name “Harry Caine” is an amalgam of two characters played by Welles.

Like most of Almodovar’s films since 1997, the emotional, visual and sexual center of “Broken Embraces” is supplied by Cruz, playing a ravishingly beautiful but tragic vertex of a romantic triangle. Almodovar knows how to get the best from Cruz, and it makes sense that a film as enthusiastically self-referential as “Broken Embraces” would have the director’s muse at its smoldering center.

Cruz, who said she would love to work with directors such as Lars Von Trier, Scorsese, Jane Campion and Jim Sheridan in the near future, most recently appeared in Rob Marshall’s “Nine,” the musical based on Federico Fellini’s “8½.” She delivers one of the film’s signature performances as Carla, filmmaker Guido’s needy, unstable lover. She said it was a great opportunity to use all the skills she honed as a child in one performance, to show a side of her talent that many audiences had yet to see.

“I danced for 17 years of my life, and now I feel I get to use it,” she said. “I would be dancing five hours a day, and then singing, then dancing, for many, many months. That’s a dream for any actor.”

– George Lang