Even so, Bitter Christmas is so enjoyable to watch that you almost will yourself into believing that Almodóvar isn’t simply reworking, with certain beats that feel a little too familiar, some of his recent preoccupations. His trademark color combinations are pleasurably on point: when Elena tosses a pillar-box-red coat over a cobalt sweater, you may as well have died and gone to Almodóvar heaven. (The movie’s production design is by the director’s longtime collaborator Antxon Gómez; the costumes are by Paco Delgado.) The score, by Alberto Inglesias, who has frequently worked with Almodóvar, has a lush, melodramatic, Sirkian quality—it helps carry the movie through some of its rougher patches. In the end, Bitter Christmas may not be as thoughtful or deep as it strives to be. It’s not wrong to expect more from Almodóvar than an anguished shrug in movie form, one that might be summed up as “Creation is hard, but it’s the only thing that makes me feel alive!” But then Rossy De Palma shows up in just one brief scene, with her sensational Modigliani-meets-Picasso face, and you suddenly remember why even some of Almodóvar’s lesser movies simply feel like home. We come for the colors, the histrionic plots, the faces, the oversharing. It’s hard to get enough of the too-muchness of Almodóvar.
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