Pedro Almodóvar | Strange Way of Life (Extraña forma de vida) / 2023

what two men could do

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pedro Almodóvar (screenwriter and director) Strange Way of Life (Extraña forma de vida) / 2023 [31 minutes]

 

As critic Brian Tallerico reminds us in his review of Pedro Almodóvar’s short film Strange Way of Life, the director has long been interested in doing a US Western. Before Ang Lee, Almodóvar was interested in filming Annie Proulx’s fiction Brokeback Mountain, but felt a Hollywood production couldn’t capture the physicality of the original and that, despite Lee’s admirable attempts, the Oscar-winning film “missed that aspect of the storytelling.”

      My argument with that film, I remind the reader, was not the physicality which I felt came off rather nicely given the Hollywood restraints. But I argued there was not enough character development to understand after their original sexual encounters, why these men remained so deeply involved with one another, particularly given their own basically heterosexual familial covers and the very sporadic visits to each other. A relationship, which is what the movie argues for, is not simply a strong sexual yen, and we never come to comprehend how or why it has transformed into something deeper as the movie argues for.

     One might almost perceive his fascinating new short as a kind of homage if not a loving satire of Lee’s very popular and beloved film. And just as I immediately did after seeing it last week, critic Victor Fraga, I discovered, recognized this work in his May 2023 review in Dirty Movies as being “some sort of unpretentious Latin tribute to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. And several other critics also perceived the connection.        

     If cowboy sheep-herders Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist first get together on a cold snowy night in small tent, Almodóvar’s cowboys first discover each other’s bodies in the most unlikely place, in a small wine storage space where they have taken some local whores to enjoy the evening. The men shoot holes in a canvas wine bag, the couples holding open their mouths next to one another as the wine gushes in, resulting in a mix of kisses and red wine, the color that dominates this movie.      

     Without even knowing it, the men soon pair up to fully enjoy their sharing of liquor, embraces, and deep sucks of each other’s tongues far better than with the girls, the whores soon trailing off to leave the two new lovers, Jake (Ethan Hawke) and Silva (Pedro Pascal), to their own pleasures. Evidently these boys have far more than a few days after to carry on together, a least two months.

      If Ennis and Jack, however, found their way back to one another in a few years, the loving couple Jake and Silva don’t find a way to reunite until 25 unimaginably long years later, when Silva crosses the desert to rejoin Jake, who is now the town sheriff. Even Jake wonders what’s been keeping him away.

 

    Yet, the two, just like Jack and Ennis, are certainly overjoyed to see one another and after sharing a good meal, hit the sack together for a night of visually enjoyable sex. Yet oddly, given Almodóvar’s comments about the physicality required of the earlier film, in Strange Way of Life, Hawke's and Pascal's sexual reunion is rather chaste, the audience getting, at most, a view of Pascal's naked butt.

     In several interviews, the director has argued that “the ‘naked’ and ‘undressed’ dialogue” is “much more erotic and powerful than showing them fucking." Through the film's dialogue, in fact, we learn far more about those two characters in 30 minutes than we ever learn about Ennis and Jake in Lee's feature film.

    And in the clear light of the morning, Jake realizes that Pascal’s visit hasn’t just been a matter of missing his long-ago inamorato. In a far more complex web of relations than Ennis and Jack might ever even have imagined for themselves, Silva’s son Joe (George Steane), has been sexually involved with Jake’s sister-in-law, a woman whom upon his brother’s death, Jake swore to look after; and according to eye-witness evidence, Joe was seen leaving the woman’s house right after her recent murder. Clearly, Silva has shown up not only to renew old acquaintances, but to find a way to save his son, either by convincing Jake to cease his plans to arrest Joe or to get the miscreant safely away from danger.

      When it’s clear that even restoked love won’t keep Jake from doing his “duty,” Silva heads off to Joe’s ranch to command his son to get his ass over the Mexican border and never come back, willing to give him just enough money to survive the trip, while demanding that also never wants to see him again, particularly after Joe describes Jake’s dead sister as having been a whore.

       Meanwhile Jake has followed Silva’s trail and ends up at the ranch before Joe has had time to get away. The two, with guns at each other’s head, face a showdown, which Silva quickly breaks by grabbing up a riffle. Training the gun on Jake, he tells Joe to head off. Jake is about ready to test his lover’s willingness to kill him by shooting his son, as Silva’s gun goes off, hitting Jake clean through his side. Jack goes down and Joe rides off.

       Grabbing hold of Jake, Silva pulls him inside the ranch house, puts him into bed, and tends to his wounds, knowing that his gunshot will have seriously wounded without killing him.

        For several days, he tends to Jake, binding him up and keeping cold compacts upon his forehead until the fever breaks and the sheriff is finally able to talk. Jake declares that he will bring   Silva before a court for attempted murder, but his old lover argues that given the fact that he has obviously tended to his wounds, such a motive would be meaningless.

     Years before Silva had attempted to convince Jake to settle down with him on a ranch, not so very different from what Jack in Brokeback Mountain had proposed to Ennis. Jake had argued that he didn’t like ranching and that besides what could two men do if settled down on a ranch. But now Silva answers his question. They’d take joy in being together, they’d make love, and most importantly take care of one other.

        Jake doesn’t respond, so we don’t truly know if he’s finally been convinced; but he can’t go anyplace for a while longer at least, and it may be, since Silva has shown him what caring for each other really means, that he might have finally recognized the benefits in permanently shacking up and sharing a bed.

        If this duo has begun this short film as vaguely characterized as Jack and Ennis of Brokeback Mountain, by the time Almodóvar’s short film comes to an end, we know far more about the lives and motivations of these two figures. And we can at least imagine that, instead of being overwhelmed by a brooding lament, these two lovely cowboys—dressed up quite stunningly by Yves Saint Laurent head designer Anthony Vaccarello—might possibly find a happy ending together, something which to my knowledge, has never before been permitted for gay men on cinema in the American West.

 

Los Angeles, October 14, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).