Strange Way of Life

The half-hour running time feels right -- there wasn’t a feature in this mix of the arch and the melancholic, but the short suffices.

It is so cool to see even bite-sized Pedro Almodóvar.

Primo dom bottom energy from both Pedros.

Strange Way of Life feels abruptly truncated, cut off at the point where it starts to get interesting. That's the thing with shorts: sometimes they're wonderfully contained little stories, other times they're big stories that are over all too soon.

Leave it to Almodóvar to take our breath away right before galloping into the sunset.

It’s a gorgeous but unsatisfying sketch of a thing, and it has such a tough time creating a sense of history around its thwarted lovers that it’s almost laughable.

It is in some ways an old-fashioned sort of Western, stripped of popular Spaghetti Western-style violence, a strong moral heart beating beneath the chaps and Stetsons.

The film offers its share of dirt and denim, brute force and fist-fighting, and a nerve-wracking stand-off. It plays by the classic genre's rules, for sure, but it ultimately suggests that there's still storytelling territory waiting to be explored.

Most of Almodovar’s films are unpredictable, emotional journeys whereas this short feels like Almodovar decided to combine “Pain and Glory” (2019) and “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), which Almodovar considered directing and passed.

... It’s thematically strong enough to make us forget that it kind of functions as a fashion show. John Wayne would’ve hated this movie, and that’s all the more reason for us to like it.