2023-05-18 16:46:30
Wild rides, big guns and elegant cowboys: Pedro Almodóvar transforms the Croisette into the Wild West. Impressions of the sumptuous Strange Way of Life and a short interview with Pedro…
In Strange Way of Life, a 31-minute western by Pedro Almodóvar, is regarding a youthful love between two elegant cowboys – the magnificent Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke – who love each other or have loved each other. Produced by Anthony Vaccarello, honcho of Saint Laurent, the film hits the nail on the head and strikes down. However, even if he had shown excerpts from Johnny Guitar In Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown and of Dueling in the sun In Matador, we were far from suspecting that Pedro would one day direct a western. At 73, he chisels this miracle, an immense and fragile work on impermanence, desire and love, a flamboyant western, Almodóvar sauce. There are of course wild rides in the desert, big guns, sheriff, ranch, duels in the sun, but Strange Way of Life – which opens with a sublime love song sung by a young man with green eyes – above all tells a love story. A sheriff, Ethan Hawke, and a cowboy, Pedro Pascal, reunite for a murder case, twenty-five years following having fallen madly in love. With music by Alberto Iglesias and photography by José Luis Alcaine, Almodóvar pays homage to the great classics: John Ford, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, King Vidor and especially Nicholas Ray. As Johnny Guitar, Strange Way of Life is a deconstructed western, the traditional codes are reversed thanks to the use of color, tricks or costumes (sublime work by Anthony Vaccarello), and the film is transformed into a tragic romance, where Almodóvar plows through his usual themes (the desire, secrecy, death) and where words hurt more than bullets (“ you never loved me, neither me nor anyone “). Once once more, Almodóvar hits the heart, proving that he is as transgressive and inspired as when he started out. And deploys a spleen that contaminates the whole Far West because Strange Way of Life is as beautiful as it is sad, like a fado song.
Big shock.
Interview :
Why do you start, at 73, in the western, a genre that seems so far from your universe
Pedro Almodfromwas : I discovered the western late in life. Before I was 20, I wasn’t a fan of the genre at all. Like film noir, I discovered the full extent of the western following I turned 20, and today, film noir and the western are my two favorite genres.
At the end of the 90s, you wanted to adapt The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon ?
In the 90s, I acquired the rights to The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, by novelist Tom Spanbauer, for a Spanish adaptation. After a first treatment, I wanted to collaborate with American writers and I had no luck. I approached specialists in the genre and none of them dared, because the source material seemed to them perhaps too inflammable, the story of a gay Indian, prostituted by his adoptive mother, d ‘a homo cowboy… They didn’t want to work on the subject and I can even give you their names: Larry McMurty (future screenwriter Secret de Brokeback Mountainwhich will earn him an Oscar in 2006, NDR), and Denis Johnson, an alcoholic writer who was used to confronting very hard themes. So I gave up…
With Strange Way of Lifeyou show gay cowboys while the western is one of the most masculine genres there is.
I wrote this film as a reaction to traditional westerns. I have nothing once morest it, but I find that there are only stereotypical male characters and that the female characters have very little strength or importance. At this point in my career, what I wanted was to do what interested me in the western genre. And what appealed to me was having two middle-aged characters talking regarding their desires. This is really the heart of the film. Moreover, the first scene that I wrote was this long conversation between the two cowboys, following this orgiastic night of alcohol and sex, where each gives his vision of desire. This is the heart of the film.
The sequel in Technikart N° 269
Strange Way of Lifetheatrical release on August 16
STATEMENT OF THE DAY
« On the board of Wall Street, Oliver Stone comes to find me in my trailer during the second week of filming. And he asks me if I’m on drugs because he thinks I’m bad and advises me to watch the rushes. I look at them and I don’t think I’m too bad. In fact, Oliver wanted to challenge me and want me to be more aggressive on screen. From then on, when I played Geko, I always thought regarding what he said to me and I was pissed. But I notice that several actors gave their best performances at Oliver Stone: Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner, Val Kilmer or Charlie Sheen. »
Michael Douglas
By Marc Godin
Photo : Iglesias More
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#SUPER #CANNES #TALK #PEDRO
