Initial reactions to director Pedro Almodovar’s “Bitter Christmas” (“Amarga Navidad”), one of the hottest nominees expected to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival on April 9, are already coming in, at least from his native Spain, where Almodovar’s latest film opened on March 20.
Most reactions have been good to excellent, especially from Spain’s largest newspapers and film publications.
El Mundo, one of Spain’s most influential newspapers, announced that “The Bitter Christmas” was a “masterpiece.” Almodóvar added: “It’s the deepest, rawest, most complex film, and even the most imperfect film, a brutal study of the motivations behind its creation.”
El Periodico de Catalunya newspaper described “Bitter Christmas” as “a precise and gentle melodrama.” The film could be seen as an “extension in a different register” of Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, which won Antonio Banderas the Cannes Best Actor Award in 2019, and in many ways he played a character not far from Almodovar himself.
Almodóvar’s return to Spanish-language filmmaking is “an autofiction, an exploration of the limits of the relationship between life and fiction,” with “the director once again playing the leading role, and further reflections on the absence of a maternal figure, prolonged mourning, the creative process, physical pain and drugs, and the songs of Chavela Vargas,” El Periodico de Catalunya newspaper noted.
But other reviews so far have differed in their enthusiasm. “Pedro Almodovar muses on the creative process in a personal and troubling drama,” Screen Daily reported. “We would have been more interested in Almodóvar, who is less caught up in himself and more concerned that his story is not sketchy and distant,” charged El Diario Vasco.
El Deseo, directed by Pedro and Agustín Almodovar, was produced and released in Spanish cinemas before being selected for Cannes. “Bitter Christmas” will gross more than 2 million euros ($2.3 million) at the Spanish box office over the weekend of April 3-5, El Blog del Cine España predicted on April 4. The final price will be $2.9 million to $3.1 million.
That number surpasses Almodóvar’s Venice Golden Lion-winning English-language film The Room Next Door ($2.8 million), starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, and ultimately puts it on par with 2021’s Parallel Mothers ($3.1 million), starring Penelope Cruz.
Shot in combination with Almodovar’s signature natural tones, monochromatic blocks, perfectly composed frames, and often gorgeous apartments and to-die-for settings, such as a chalet in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, the challenge of “Bitter Christmas” is also the one that most divides critics. It’s a film-within-a-movie structure, meaning it focuses on Almodovar’s own creative process.
The film features Elsa, a commercial director (Barbara Rennie) who wrote a film script in 2004 inspired by the suffering of her friends. It quickly becomes clear that Elsa’s story is a work of fiction written in 2026 by film director Raul (Argentinian Leonardo Sbarraria, an Almodovar look-alike with a gorgeous bushy white hair).
It’s rare for great writers to voice their own doubts, fears, and contradictions in their films, including those about the films that audiences are watching. For example, when Raoul confesses his fear that the film he’s writing (which makes up most of Bitter Christmas) will be considered a subpar work, and his global prestige will be instantly destroyed. But Almodovar does so here, and at least one character exposes Raul’s script, and by extension Elsa’s story, to serious criticism for its flawed structure.
“I wanted to show the weaknesses and shortcomings of the film, even though it’s not abusive, and shake up the totemic persona of the director a little bit. I wanted to question whether I have the right to do everything I do,” the director said at a press conference before the film’s release in Spain, calling “Bitter Christmas” “the film in which I was cruelest to myself.”
For many fans, “Bitter Christmas” shows “brutal honesty” and “remarkable original structure”, as Cadena Ser, Spain’s top radio network, claimed. For critics, the film lacks emotional impact.
But there is one scene that most people remember. In Elsa’s story, she meets Amaia, a Spanish singer-songwriter. Amaia’s character sings Mercedes Sosa’s 2009 song “Song of Simple Things.” Echoing the melancholy of Almodovar’s work, “Love is simple and simple things are eroded by time,” Amaia sings in a scene written by Almodovar’s alter ego Raul, who admits he now dedicates his life to filmmaking.
“This scene and this song are the heart of the film for me,” Almodovar said.
(LR) Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Leonardo Sbararia “Bitter Christmas”
