Pedro Almodovar's Lacerating Self-Portrait Is a Difficult Watch

The story begins in 2004 with Elsa, a director working in advertising who lives with her firefighter boyfriend Bonifacio in a vividly colored Madrid apartment. Elsa suffers debilitating migraines that send her to an emergency room she once used as a film location. Her life and identity are intentionally shaped to mirror a character who mirrors another filmmaker. In 2026, Raúl, an internationally revered director, writes a script based on Elsa and Bonifacio. Raúl’s reverence contrasts with Elsa’s earlier failures and cult followings. The narrative structure becomes increasingly difficult to separate purposeful looseness from aimless sprawl, with the final act providing the main payoff.

"Everything interesting in Bitter Christmas, the latest feature from the revered Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, happens in the last act, which doesn't just make it a difficult film to write about, but also to watch. Though there is a purposefulness behind the seemingly aimless nature of its first three quarters, at a certain point, an intentionally unfocused movie is indistinguishable from one sprawling all over the place without meaning to, and it's impossible to parse how much of Bitter Christmas is the former and how much is the latter."

"Bitter Christmas begins in 2004 with Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), a director who now only works in advertising but previously made two films, neither of them a hit, though each has a cult following. Elsa lives with her solicitous boyfriend, a firefighter named Bonifacio (Patrick Criado), in a typically gorgeous Almodóvarian apartment in Madrid done up in lusciously bold colors. She's obviously successful, though lately she's been dealing with debilitating migraines, the most recent of which has gotten severe enough to send her to the emergency room of a hospital that she coincidentally once used as a film location."

"If Elsa's life doesn't entirely line up - if she, say, feels a lot like an older gay man poured into the body of a younger straight woman - that's revealed to be by design. She's a stand-in for a character who is himself a stand-in for Almodóvar, a silver-haired filmmaker named Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia) who, in 2026, has been writing the saga of Elsa and Bonifacio as his latest script. Raúl, unlike Elsa, is internationally revered, to the point where he responds tetchily to his longtime assistant M"

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